


Blue Diamond

by pinkbagels



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: A reverse companion piece for 'A Case Of Bad Diction' series - modern and farcical, F/F, Mycroft could have been the British Government but she's too smart for that, Mycroft is a tad Pink Panther here, Sherlock Cheech and John Chong, Sherlock and John are weedwhackers, casefic, original ACD canon, original f/f take on Mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-01-08 14:47:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 80,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12256494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkbagels/pseuds/pinkbagels
Summary: I started this story as an original m/m work but it kept stalling due to a) the characters not being the right gender for the fit of the plot and b) I really wanted to write an 'opposite' story to the one I wrote in 'A Case Of Bad Diction', where the Mystrade is set in modern times but with the characters completely shuffled and changed into an original shape.  There are many published authors who have taken their love of Doyle's work and used it more as a writing prompt than a place of canonical severity (Sherlock Holmes vs. The Martians, anyone?).  So...Here we are!Mycroft Holmes, professional thief, is annoyed by her girlfriend's distraction over a set of human luggage sitting in a St. Mary's morgue.  That said luggage was being used to mule hard drugs into London by the Crown Cartel is an added irritation.  All Mycroft really wants is for DI Grace Lestrade to play house with her and revel in her Belgravia estate and all its pretty baubles, but even this is marred by her post-modernist neighbours with their chrome and glass monstrosity next door. Worse still, they are neglecting their borzoi.  Who knew dog thieving and corpses stuffed with drugs would go hand in hand?





	1. bees and baubles

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter one

There are few things more grand than a convertible with the roof down and the scent of spring invading one's consciousness. Speed is pleasant, as is soft and smooth leather seats, but none of this is worthwhile without the environmental packaging that surrounds it. This particular convertible, born to be outdoors in vibrant sunlight, is a sleek, black, BMW Z4 that shines like obsidian in the bright light of early afternoon and purrs as smoothly as a panther napping on a branch at the zoo, a touch of wildness remaining within the sedate hum of its domesticity. A conspicuous vehicle which of course had to be paired with subtle attire, her vintage haute couture Bob Mackie sundress circa 1979, holding a price tag that was easily twice the cost of the car itself. It was a rather narcissistic nod to the concept that clothes made a man (or woman, in this case), and she considered herself to be an exceptional one, enough for a sleek little number on four wheels to be more accessory than prime cut. She checked her watch, studded with diamonds that glittered in the early afternoon sun, price tag ten thousand pounds, and adjusted her Gucci sunglasses, price tag two thousand pounds, and enjoyed the drive into the country with her foot gentle on the gas (Dolce & Gabanna shell sandals, eight hundred pounds). The flowering trees rained petals across the road as though welcoming her into the fairyland that was the realm of the Untouchable Rich.

Mycroft Holmes was no stranger to such circles, she had been lurking in their homes and cellars for almost two decades now, her own wealth not so much borrowed as carefully seized. That she was a thief was not a quibble her conscience pestered her with, for she was hardly the type who stole security cheques from the infirm or ripped out rent money from the purses of single mothers. That sort of pilfering was done by those whom she stalked.

Mycroft understood the supremely wealthy and the upper echelons of society better than most, and if she hadn't decided that politics had little to offer her by way of power, and the spy business in M-16 even less (she had no desire to whore her body for the world's secrets and was bored by the droning narcissism of old, powerful men) it was tempered by her inner need for justice. She'd spent many a tiresome evening at various black tie soirees listening to the conservative milieu drone on about the rising cost of health care and the nasty burden that was the poor. People so far removed from the realities of life often had opinions on it, and these beliefs were archaic and weirdly Victorian, still clinging to the myth that poverty had its roots in laziness.

She was heading to the home of one such proponent, namely the Queen's Equerry, and she'd often heard the man expound on the virtues of the workhouse and how it was a shame they weren't still in existence. "You're a smart one, Mycroft. If you had the right leanings you'd be married to a prince and be well on your way to becoming the British government. I don't judge you, my dear, but really, that kind of boarding school experimentation should have left you long ago. You aren't doing your ambitions a good service."

Thus, Mycroft felt in her heart she was performing a secretive brand of social service, one that admittedly benefited her and gave her a lifestyle similar to those whose pretty things she hunted. Still, she had to admit that it was the pleasure of equivocation that she clung to most, for these were people for whom millions upon millions worth of rocks and baubles were mere puddles in the lake of their wealth, so vast was their empires that the loss of such glittering blobs was a mere teardrop and nothing more.

To hold the entire economy of a country in the cost of a single ring seemed reckless to her. Such irresponsibility had to be punished.

The area she found herself in was a pocket of gentility just outside of Hampstead, where rolling meadows still prevailed and the cost of country living had skyrocketed past the means of every Londoner who hoped for fresh air and a life free of asthma. She parked her car in front of the grand mansion that housed a half dozen servants and the Equerry's family in Edwardian excess, the massive thirteen bedroom estate a quiet, looming relic from an era where manners and wealth co-existed in symbiosis with the poorest of the region. These grand places were never meant to be homes of comfort, rather they were stopping grounds for various wealthy patrons to mingle with one another freely, with errant relatives squirreled away in one of its many rooms. So many had visited the halls of Georgia House that it ran more like a hotel than a place of permanent residence, a feeling that the last two centuries did nothing to shake.

A harried looking young valet who was a mess of dark curls and worry took her car keys and with a gracious wave of his hand bid Mycroft as to where she needed to go. The front doors of the manor were wide open, letting in rustling leaves and petals which a busy maid kept at bay with the constant sweep of a small broom. The walk was a direct one, from one open door to the other on the opposite side, which opened into the vast gardens and grounds of the estate. She made a point to catalogue the various objects d'art she passed on her way there, an obscure Picasso sculpture tucked against the far wall and a tired looking Gaugin that avoided her usual pastels on a stand near the staircase. There were a couple of Ming era vases placed in prominence in the centre of the hall that held little interest, and the out of place Dada by Duchamps in the far corner made of chicken wire, clock gears and burned fabric looked like a pile of trash.

It was all very typical of someone with money and no sense of artistic flow, the mishmash of tastes irking her. Mycroft sighed as she suffered her way through the home, for she was a sufferer of order at her core, and firmly believed that every work of art should be seen in its context for its message to be fully appreciated. Messages which were lost on those who refused to read them.

A master of this illiteracy approached her now, and Mycroft braced herself for an onslaught of false smarm with what she hoped was a convincing smile. She could already feel her cheeks smarting from the effort. If only she could find tape to paste the expression there and be done with it!

"Ah, Mycroft, how good it is to see you!"

Sir Arthur Billingsworth, the III, approached Mycroft with outstretched arms, his spotless tuxedo fitting ill on a man who was used to tired tweeds. Mycroft did her best not to cringe as she was pulled into the embrace, for Billingsworth's hygiene had never been the best and a whiff of his breath betrayed the presence of rotted teeth and mossy halitosis. Grimacing into her smile, Mycroft cleared her throat and broke free with practised decorum, her aching pleasantry caging in the fact she was holding her breath.

Billingsworth was all too pleased to see her, a hand gently slapping her back and dangerously close to her rear end as he pushed her towards the bride and groom. The expense of their wedding did little to hide the awkward, shy couple who looked ready to bolt from the entire thing. Mycroft couldn't blame the bride, her dress looked like an exploded cupcake, all sequins and fluff, enough to make her tiny body disappear within it until she was nothing more than a pair of lips and large brown eyes peering out of layers of white crinoline. Her future husband looked just as out of place in his expertly tailored suit, one which had unwisely accommodated his nervous stoop and made standing with his shoulders back strain every button. Pinched expressions looked up at her in greeting and she felt a genuine pity for the young couple, set as they were to live under the yoke of Dear Madam, the matriarch of the Equerry's home who was now, much to Mycroft's displeasure, marching towards their little group with furious intent.

Mrs. Martha Billingsworth, or 'Dear Madam' as those who knew her tyranny called her, was a leftover Thatcherite whose conservatism had gradually chiselled her outward appearance into that of her idol. Heavily starched hair swept above her brow and was parted to the side. She had a stern expression and wore a pastel skirt suit that did little to feminize her burgeoning masculinity, the crepe fabric wrapping her tightly in uncomfortable angles, as did the colour coded plain pumps she wore of an equally dour hue that did not reflect their astronomical price. It was a rather special skill to be able to take such pricey fashions, designed by obscure haute couture artists from Paris, and manage to reduce their wild talents to a custom dreariness that would make even the mass simplicity of Calvin Klein yawn in boredom.

She smiled and it was as bland and false as everything about her, and Myrcoft fought the urge to grimace at her in greeting instead. "Mickey. You made it. Very nice. It's a good day for a wedding, I should think, this was all carefully planned, of course. I had a meteorologist check the weather patterns for months, and a good thing, too, for Janie was opting for having the wedding on Sunday, and that just wasn't going to do. Overcast, you see. No chance of rain, according to his forecast, but the photographs would be affected."

Janie fumbled with one of the frills on her ridiculously puffy wedding dress. Mycroft could barely see the tips of her fingers, and could only judge her fiddling by the flash of pink beneath the layers of silk and taffeta.

"You look lovely, Janie," Mycroft said, but the girl bit her bottom lip at this, and turned away from the compliment.

"It's all rubbish. Kevin's grandpapa died, and the funeral was today."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

"Nobody's sorry. We're trapped in a coup and can't escape it. Mama won't let us."

"Shockingly rude, don't you think, Mickey?" Dear Madam shook her head at the morose groom, Kevin, as though he'd created this inconvenience himself. "Couldn't hold on for one day to get through a wedding of his favourite grandson. Well, there was nothing for it, the weather is solely in our favour for today and there was no other choice but to continue on. Dear me, Kevin, please stop tearing up, people will think you are about to bolt from the whole thing! You shouldn't be out here, anyway, and neither should you, Janie, you should be in your room with the bridesmaids."

"They're all at grandpapa's funeral," Janie reminded her mother. "I'm best friends with Kevin's sister."

"Well that's just uncalled for! Abandoning a bride on her big day! The cheek of the lot of them! Kevin, don't think for a second I'm forgiving your father and mother for this, either, this day was a priority and it looks uneven now that no one on your side of the family is filling up the pews! I've had to ask the servants to stand in, otherwise rumours will abound that you're the black sheep!"

Kevin snuffled and gave Janie an imploring look that was thick was misery. "I loved grandpapa. He raised me until I was thirteen."

"Well, the unthinking man had to die and have his funeral the same day as your wedding, so he couldn't have given that much of a toss! Terminal cancer my eye! A shot of opiods and some decent willpower could have got him through!"

"Yes, highly selfish of him," Mycroft agreed, carefully sculpted brow raised. She turned to the now openly weeping Kevin. "At the very least he could have made arrangements to have his corpse seated in the front row."

Kevin gave her a shocked look at her candor, only for it to soften as he realized that Mycroft was indeed on his side, and this whole shaming of a man who inconveniently died was as ridiculous as the wedding itself had become.

Dear Madam had not spared any expense in regards to her poor taste as was reflected in the massive flower arrangements that poured over every table like a mess of tropical forest. Petals were already spilling onto plates and there seemed to be an overabundance of bees that had invaded the reception area, which was set up not far from the ancient country church where the wedding was to take place. That Georgia House and the local parish had a close relationship in its history was obvious to anyone, though it was clear in recent years that the generosity of the Equerry had waned in lieu of Dear Madam's priorities. The bricks were in terrible disrepair as was the peat roof that had obvious holes in it and no doubt let in torrents of rain when the storms hit.

The vicar was a young man who stood with a sense of ownership on the steps of the small, decaying church with newly refashioned stained glass windows that had been financed by Dear Madam who pointedly ignored the peat roof that was in great need of replacing. He smoked a cigarette with one hand, pocketing the other, and he gave Mycroft's curious approach a backwards nod that suggested he had no background whatsoever in gentility and had little patience for the variety set to step into his crumbling enclave.

"A lovely day for the happy couple," Mycroft said.

The vicar shrugged and sucked in half of his cigarette before tapping the ash onto the steps of the church. Mycroft noticed he kept staring at the reception area with a sense of angry trepidation, his narrowed eyes taking in the flowers and bees with worried focus. "Good enough. Is this going to take long, all this meandering out in the garden like that? I told her not to put the reception area so close to the church, and it's on the wrong side. Just how many bloody flowers are on those tables? I can see the bees from here, blast her!"

People were beginning to mill around the garden and several were now heading towards the church, a team of servants carrying champagne on wooden trays following them. One passed Mycroft, who plucked one of the glittering glasses from the tray and brought it to her lips as she continued her conversation with the vicar. "I believe we are going to be missing half of the bride and groom's party thanks to the rudeness of mortality. There seems to be an ample amount of people coming in, however, though I'm not entirely sure the bride and groom are acquainted with most of them."

Mycroft was well aware that this was more a pissing contest for Dear Madam than anything else, leaving everyone, including her overstuffed, fluffy white daughter on the sidelines. Arthur Billingsworth III greeted and nodded at the collection of politicians and business owners who drifted through his opened atrium door and flowed like coins spilled from a mint onto his carefully cultivated garden. There was a decided lack of youth in this gathering, a fact that greatly disappointed Mycroft. Regardless of the work she had to do, it was always a pleasure enjoying the antics of the young and spoiled.

Not to mention it was easy to place blame on them later. She gave the vicar a deciding once over, taking in the worried expression as the man looked over the grounds and concentrated too deeply on the arrangements of flowers in the distance. She wasn't sure of that significance, and should have taken it into account, but with the poor state of the church and the obvious lack of funding for those things that were necessary, the vicar was an easy mark.

He would be the one to take the fall.

"Bloody bothersome wretches, the lot of them. I knew Kevin's grandpapa, he was a good man and loved the lad to pieces. It wouldn't have been a problem to push it over to one day later, but oh no, the old battle axe has have her damned feng shui and to the devil with anyone's feelings. Do you see that dress poor Janie has to be wrapped in? She didn't even get to pick it, the thing came in the mail and it was put on her this morning like she were a Paris mannequin. All because of some business transactions happening with overseas investments and the damn ugly thing was a gift. Ha! An ugly dress for an ugly day, that's what I think of this whole thing."

The vicar tossed his spent cigarette and stubbed it out with his heel pressed against the stone steps. "What's the point of having windows, I ask, when there's no house for them to give a view out? Bloody stupid. I told her to put the reception area on the other side of the grounds, a good hundred meters more away from the church, but oh no, can't accommodate anyone, that one." He glanced down at Mycroft as though suddenly realizing he was letting his vitriol about the wedding out on a complete stranger. "If you think I'm talking out of turn, I don't rightly care, I'm not big on the judgement of mere human beings. How do you know this lot?"

That was a good question and one that would have to be carefully answered. For though Arthur Billingsworth III recognized Mycroft and always greeted her warmly, they had never met in any official capacity. She was always simply there, showing up at formal soirees and parties, using just the right language and mannerisms to ensure that she blended in with the elite. When asked after her profession, Mycroft kept it vague, insisting she was an investor in foreign objects along with hints that she was the paramor of this or that oil baron, a bland, fairly attractive woman who hung on a wealthy man's arm as an ornament. This seemed to satisfy most of the inquisitive, and for those who tried to force her to explain further she merely redirected the question back and would earn a very detailed account of their own business dealings, bragged and expanded upon in obvious flirtation until Mycroft had a full understanding of every facet of her mark's business and side purchases (which were her bread and butter) all while revealing nothing about herself save that she was a successful enigma.

The strangest conceit of the filthy rich, Mycroft discovered, was that as long as you looked to be a part of their club they didn't like asking too many questions. It truly didn't matter if you were a gun runner or a drug kingpin, as long as you were discreet and threw your money around with abandon, the latent narcissism of glitter and pomp would prevail. Mycroft did her best to avoid the seedier sides of wealth which often overlapped with 'respectable' businesses as these types could often see through her ruse. Those who operated under paranoia and suspicion were rarely taken by a pretty smile.

There were no such characters here. It was unlikely anyone in the Equerry's influence was packing a pistol or a small ice pick, ready to take out cartel rivals who had infiltrated a private family function. This particular gang was of the Royal variety, with old money clinging to new thanks to investments in double sided sticky tape (a billion dollar a year industry--who could have guessed that double sided tape could prove so lucrative?). Mycroft found the company here boring but easy, and as she scoped the grounds she noted the sidelong glances of the servants, their rolling eyes and flustered, angry expressions as they passed every guest. Dear Madam ruled with oppressive might in her little kingdom. She would find no allies among her serfs.

The garden was now full of elderly well wishers and Mycroft inwardly praised her luck over how easy it would be to slip away and disappear as the church began to fill, her goal embedded in one of the bedrooms on the second floor of Georgia House. With the harried staff preoccupied with Dear Madam's instructions to pay full attention to the guests in the garden, Mycroft was able to slip past them through the back servant's entrance, now abandoned as they moved from the main floor kitchen to the garden, and up through the set of hidden stairs that had brought many an Edwardian maid to private rooms where they secretively cleaned while the Lords and Ladies sipped tea in their massive library on the other side of the house.

She had memorized the layout and knew exactly where Dear Madam kept her safe, a rather obvious spot above the headboard of her bed, the safe 'hidden' behind a painting of a warship. Though she completely lacked an imagination, there was the small problem that the safe was a newer variety, one with a digital lock that would be difficult to crack. She wasn't worried about failing this, however, but it would require time which she didn't have in abundance. The distraction of the wedding would have to do and she hoped it would be a long winded affair where her own and other's momentary absence would be not only forgiven but expected.

The vicar grimaced as he watched a young female servant drag up a large bouquet of roses up the steps of the church, buzzing bees collecting greedily above the red petals in curious hunger.

"Don't bring those in here!"

"They're on the request of Madam, Father."

"Blast her! I told her specifically there were to be no flowers in the church! There never are!"

It was an odd exclamation, for what wedding wasn't drowned in petals and Mycroft had to wonder what the good vicar did during funeral services. A man of the cloth and eccentric too, she rather liked the angry expression he constantly sported, as though he was having constant discussions with Management, aka God, over the haranguing ignorance of Mrs. Billingsworth.

The guests had now all filtered into the church and the vicar followed them, cursing under his breath as he did so and dodging insects as he hurried past the doors, which he closed behind him. Mycroft remained on the steps, finishing her glass of champagne as Arthur slowly walked up to her, an expression of happiness laying upon him like an exhausted mask.

"It's a difficult thing letting go of a daughter," Arthur said, and Mycroft nodded in quiet assent. Arthur glanced over his shoulder at the ridiculous figure of the slight girl amid the piles of fabric, who was barely able to walk without assistance. Kevin passed both of them and silently made his way into the church, closing the door behind him as though he was paying his deep respects at a funeral rather than his wedding celebration.

Arthur sighed. "It's all rather unfortunate, if you ask me. I like Kevin, he's a good lad from a good family and it's the proper sort of match. They are impetuous, youth are, and Janie got herself in a certain condition, you see. Not showing at all yet, of course, the frills hide all that. I can't figure for the life of me why her mother had to be so secretive over it all, they were planning on sharing a flat and it's not like the old days, you don't send your daughters off to 'trips to Europe' to get rid of that little problem. Both Janie and Kevin want it, of course. They weren't even going to get married, couldn't see the need to. My, things are different from my day. I can appreciate how the world has changed, but my wife...She clings to the past so fervently she might as well be asking for the return of public executions. One could say she's performing one today. I know our Janie hasn't been honest, that Kevin isn't the only one. He might not even be the father for all I know. It's a different sort of world now. Oh so very different these days."

Mycroft gave him a sympathetic nod which Arthur interpreted as deep communication. The Equerry slapped Mycroft on her rear (handsy bastard!) and gave her a cheeky grin before he made his way to his doom within the church, followed close behind by the wobbling form of his daughter with Dear Madam and several servants holding her up like a pile of wadded tissues as they near rolled her into the church. She made a move to go in behind them, only for the doors to shut and she was summarily locked out.

Well. This was fortuitous. The one good thing about this sort of family tragedy was that all involved were too distracted to care about the antics of their guests or whether or not they were in proper attendance. The focus now was on sealing the fate of Janie and Kevin who were destined for divorce within the year. Pity, that.

They were a well matched couple, however. The baby would be cute. If it turned out to be Kevin's prodigy, of course.

Mycroft waited a beat before turning on her expensive sandaled heel and headed for the main house, dodging harried looking servants. The plain dress she wore matched the colour scheme for the wedding, and thus her attire was similar enough for her to be mistaken for one of the many caterers milling about the scene, the plethora of flowers still coming in by the bushel. She plucked a white peony and tucked it around the thin strap of her simple, conservative sundress as a point of whimsy and, ensuring that the servants and hired help were far too busy enacting Dear Madam's strict instructions, which now seemed to involve rotating glass pillars with blinking blue lights in them, she silently made her way up the stairs unnoticed.

As eclectic as the main floor was, it still retained that sort of antiseptic level of good taste that would photograph well, the shallow imprint of wealth that most of the populace saw. What was hidden upstairs was the mess of bad taste and clueless consumption, with the patriarch's hobbies (war history and paintings of battleships) in direct competition with his wife's fondness for modern art pieces (such as the large blocks of concrete at the end of the long corridor with pop cans embedded in it, entitled 'Pop Culture'.). As she opened the door to the master bedroom, the clashing monstrosity of modern art versus war memorabilia was in full on battle, a mess of tangled wires and stoic paintings of warships littering the interior like a blitzkrieg.

The bed was huge, custom designed to be larger than a king size and suggesting its occupants enjoyed having significant space between them lest a limb accidentally entangle. The thought of Arthur Billingsworth the III and Dear Madam having any kind of conjugal fun gave Mycroft the shivers. Grimacing, she slid on her white cloth gloves and crept onto the bed in her bared feet, her pricey sandals carefully slipped off and placed at the foot of the bed. With practised stealth she walked across the firm as a board mattress and approached the painting of the warship affixed on the wall above the headboard. Within the choppy waters men were dying and the sea was violent and unforgiving.

She doubted any such passion met the sheets below it.

She carefully took the painting off of its hook and placed it on top of the pillows at her feet. The safe was revealed and, cracking her knuckles so her fingers would be limber, she took a strong magnet out of her inside jacket pocket and ran it over the digital keypad, which she hoped would wipe its internal memory. Then, the long process of entering in a new code would begin, using the name of the owner, namely Billingsworth, and the corresponding numbers for the letters and then the address and birth dates and street numbers, all of which were preambles before attempting to change the pass code. She had done her research carefully into this type of safe and had broken into their main office a week ago, pretending to be a mail clerk. Disguise was a well worn part of her repertoire, and no one thought twice when a harried looking secretary who looked exactly like every other harried, overworked secretary in the building jogged into the basement filing room with a pile of stuffed manila folders held against her chest. She'd worn no make-up and sported a pair of thick glasses.

"Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses" Dorothy Parker had said, and Mycroft used the anonymity afforded to her advantage.

Of course, most thieves don't go so far as to do extensive research on safe companies and actually break into their buildings and files to seek out their secrets. But Mycroft was of a thorough sort of breed, the kind that could envision the larger picture, which glitter and pomp often obscured. The truth she revealed was an important one for all to remember:

Nothing in this world is certain. Nothing is secure.

The sloppy record keeping at the safe company had aided her, with Billingsworth's pertinent details at the ready for he had already forgotten the pass code twice before and an exasperated but helpful employee at the safe company had handwritten a set of very useful instructions for Billingsworth that told him how to change the password himself.

She heard the whirr and click that told her the safe's internal computer had accepted her information and it was now patiently waiting for the company's assigned serial numbers before allowing full access. She paused as she stared at the unopened safe, her gloved hands on her rather shapeless hips as she considered the possibilities that rode upon the item held within it. A new house, of course, for she was getting tired of her Belgravia condo that pretended to have Victorian influence but its newly renovated neighbour was veering dangerously into post modern glass and chrome which she detested. Besides, she had grand plans that didn't involve just herself, and only a quaint century home on Crowndale Road would do.

The more current problem was a very simple one, the safe would need a new password after she opened it, and she didn't want them opening it right away, of course, and creating a bit of a puzzle for the safe company's main office was yet another form of public service, in her opinion. She knew the programmers would be thrilled with her hacking of their system and she had given them a further challenging puzzle for them to solve. Safecrackers and safe makers were a tag team of cryptographers, escalating their talents into ever higher levels of complex codes. They called her particular safe cracks 'Blue Binary', so named after her fondness for navy sapphires.

She typed in a series of numbers, three rows of fifteen used by the company's main computer base, and the safe opened up as easily as a refrigerator door. She stood with the metal door wide open, searching within it as though she were hunting down a forgotten bottle of expensive wine in her fridge.

It was not sapphires that had captured her attention this day, it was not those that had spurred on her prolonged research and her embedding of herself into the life of the Equerry and his family to such a personal degree. The result of her efforts lay on a bed of wrinkled black velvet, and she gingerly picked the large diamond up, the glittering rock embedded in a gold band that hugged it close and almost, but not quite, fit Mycroft's ring finger when she took off her white glove to test its circumference. She polished it with the lapel of her suit jacket and marvelled over its sky blue hue before tucking the near billion dollar jewel into her pocket and closing up the safe. She ended up using the name of the painting as the new pass code, BattleOfLissa, a violent Volonakis that she was happy to leave behind.

She cheerfully arranged all the bedcovers as they were, mindful to sweep them clear of all wrinkles when she stepped off of the bed, her sandals deftly put back on and her white gloves tucked away in the hidden lining of her clasp purse, neatly folded like a handkerchief. She paused at the door, watching the melee of servants and maids bustling on the ground floor, their attention suddenly riveted by a commotion that was happening outside. She frowned as he watched a sea of aqua and white fabric encased servants surge towards the garden in the back of the house, trays dropped and champagne glass shattering, hands placed on open, horrified mouths as chaos overtook their dancing order.

Georgia House was fully abandoned. She could have her pick of any bauble that took her fancy, now, there would be no witness to her saunter from one room to the next, pilfering it of objects. But she had her prize and curiosity was taking over now, her usual ninja stealth traded for bold steps out of the bedroom and down the main stairs and, ignoring the hiding spots from witnesses the various art displays would have provided her in the front foyer, she walked with confident purpose past the empty kitchen and out through the open tall glass doors leading into the back garden.

There was an awful lot of screaming.

She frowned as she approached the crowd of frightened, elderly rich mixed tightly with chefs and maids and other assorted servants, all of them sporting looks of shock and horror at the scene before them. She didn't need to pretend concern, for the fallen form of the vicar on the front steps of the church, surrounded by an aura of spent cigarette butts, was enough to spur her into action. Janie and her already dulled wedded bliss was now replaced with wailing sobs with Kevin wrapping his hands around her taffeta skirts and finding it difficult to fully embrace her. Dear Madam was tutting on the sidelines and wondering what all the fuss was about. The vicar was breathing, though with great difficulty and from the swollen mass that was now his face it was clear he wouldn't be for much longer.

Arthur Billingsworth the III was at Mycroft's elbow in an instant, his fear etched in every freckle of his pampered face. His foul breath made Mycroft recoil. "I don't understand it! One minute he was bidding the bride and groom a proper blessing and the next he was collapsed here on the steps of the church, flopping over them like a fish trapped in a boat! What do you make of it, Mickey? It's a terrible business, if you ask me. Doesn't bode well for Martha's feng shui."

Mycroft ignored him, paying close attention instead to the frantic, red and puffy face of the vicar whose lips were so swollen he could barely get the words out.

"B...b...b..."

"I can hear the ambulance. I should send someone to open the gate, I think it may be locked...Did you have trouble getting in, Mickey? I should send one of the maids, she would have a key. I think. Damned if I can remember the code for it now, though. Gates are tricky things, all these silly numbers we have to keep remembering, it's a real bother living under so many locks."

Mycroft concentrated not on Arthur Billingsworth's pointless rambling, but on the frantic movements of the vicar, whose face was now so swollen his eyes were tiny slits. The vicar's hand frantically patted at his pockets, and it was then that understanding suddenly hit Mycroft, and, without waiting for any advice or comment or tired exclamation of how awful this all was, she went through each of the vicar's pockets until she found what looked to be a rather chubby pen.

A single shot of adrenaline. Well, then, this was a real problem, the poor bastard was allergic to bees. She was sure Dear Madam had been informed of this and had, politely, forgotten. Even now she was too busy bossing around her hired caterers and bemoaning the meal that was ruined to care about the life of a downed spiritual man who'd been forced into her midst.

There wasn't a second more to waste. Mycroft opened the cap and, to the gasp of all surrounding her, she plunged the needle deep through the fabric of the vicar's trousers and into his thigh.

The swelling instantly went down enough to allow the poor man to breathe. Mycroft pressed her face close to the vicar's ear. "I don't know who you pissed off to deserve this post, but I'd say if you wish to live another day you'll run as far as you can from that harpy's apathy! You're just a pretty set of stained glass windows to compiment Georgia House to her and nothing more!"

The vicar coughed, his voice a strained wheeze. "Point taken. I told them I wanted to work in Queens and this is where the bishop sent me, the son of a whore!"

The vicar sat up with Mycrofts aid, and the crowd erupted into cheers, with Mcyroft's backside slapped hard enough to make her cringe.

"Well done, old girl!" Arthur Billingsworth exclaimed and Mycroft fought the urge to punch his silly, unthinking, stinking mouth.

"Nothing to it, really. A simple allergy, with an even simpler solution. We're just lucky he had an EpiPen in his pocket. Ah, at last, the EMS are here."

Billingsworth gave the approaching ambulance a nod and was pulled aside and behind the vehicle by a constable who arrived on the scene and wanted the details about what had happened. Mycroft gave the vicar a knowing look. "Do me a favour and don't mention my name to any of the reporters who will be flooding your hospital room with questions about working for the Queen B for Bitch. I was an unknown guest and nothing more."

The vicar frowned at her as paramedics rushed over and began working on him, picking him up and strapping him onto a gurney, while the crowd was pushed back to allow them room.

"You aren't one of them."

"No."

"I'd say you are an angel, but I've got a feeling you're a bit wing clipped for that."

"I'm no dove."

"No. You're a bloody magpie." The vicar grinned at this. "The Lord does work in mysterious ways. Here's a tip, there's gold candelabras and communion bowls in the back room behind the altar, a good 24 carat collection worth thousands. Load yourself up, they were a gift from Dear Madam and the church got insurance."

Mycroft smiled down at him as he was wheeled into the back of the ambulance. "I'm afraid I'm not one for tacky bric-a-brac."

The vicar became suddenly serious, his smile faltering. "No. I don't imagine you are."

Mycroft stood aside as the ambulance doors closed and vicar was whisked away to a nearby hospital, leaving behind traumatized guests and homicidal bees. She sighed and gave Arthur Billingsworth the III, his Dear Madam and both Janie and Kevin his most heartfelt apologies, but it seemed best under the circumstances that she leave before the reception started. She was feeling rather ill.

"Of course, dear girl, you must be undone by this whole business!"

No, actually, the rush of adrenaline was not just visited upon the vicar, and Mycroft could feel the residual excitement building within herself as well, and she didn't want it wasted on this dull company and their terrible attempts at hospitality. She nodded towards the rows of cronies gathered at the tables already, hungry for meat after watching a man nearly die of bee torture. There was a certain generational bloodlust at play here that sat ill with her and she couldn't wait to be free of it.

Her ass slapped again, Mycroft fought the urge to return it with a punch across Billingsworth's jaw and instead braced her shoulders and made her way out of the garden and back through Georgia House. Its clogged heart of unappreciated art was one that she couldn't wait to put into her past. The valet brought her BMW around and she slid into the seat and started the engine with a press of a button, the sultry tones of Beethoven cascading over her as the car purred into action. It took a while for her to drive through the country roads and back into London, the sun a splash of orange as she drove the car through the Mall, the early evening full of happy promises.

Her cell phone chimed. Literally. Her ring tone was of the Notre Dame Basilica's organ, recorded herself during a visit to Montreal just last year, when she was on the hunt for a specialized ruby. The heavy tones of the pipes and their history were a hint to Mycroft's impassioned nature and who, specifically, that ring tone was for. She pressed a Bluetooth speaker button on the dashboard of her car, answering it.

"I will see you within the hour," Mycroft promised.

There was a crackling cough on the other end and Mycroft frowned over it, the phlegmatic curse that was uttered under the woman's breath spilling out of her speakers like spent coffee and crumpled fags. "I won't make it. Go on and enjoy it on your own, I'm right busy here."

Mycroft's good mood was instantly quashed.

Oh no, she was not going to do this!

"It took me ages to get that reservation! You know how much I like their strawberry tarts!"

Grace's hoarse voice crackled through the speakers. "I can't help it, Mycroft, bad people are making my life hell. Do you think I wouldn't prefer to be spending my night with a tart rather than here with Manny in the morgue? Murder is a painstaking business, Mycroft, don't be a shallow bint."

Mycroft bit on the inside of her cheek, a nasty retort threatening to explode but one she held in check with a considerable amount of patience. "I've had an incredibly fortuitous day and wanted to enjoy its spoils with you."

"So you've been playing pirate all day, then. We've had this conversation before, Mycroft, you can't be telling me all the details of your exploits, it'll cause me no end of conflict of interest. Go on and enjoy a nice dinner and celebrate on your own, and I'll see you tomorrow."

"I don't want to see you tomorrow, I want to see you tonight!"

"Don't start with your hysterics, I've just said, I'm bloody trapped here."

Mycroft punched her steering wheel in spoiled fury, her happy mood completely destroyed. "You always do this! What's the point of having a nice dinner all alone without you there? This is a very special night for me, Grace, and I planned it all very carefully and..."

Rustling erupted through the speakers and the sound of hedge clippers cutting through thick twigs filled the small convertible. Mycroft suddenly felt sick. She knew what that sound meant.

Manny's voice, clear and precise, interrupted their argument. "Inspector Lestrade, you need to see this."

"I'll be right there, Manny." A long sigh seeped into the car. "Mycroft, I'm elbows deep in corpses right now. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"But..."

"Tomorrow, Crofty."

Homicide Inspector Grace Lestrade hung up, leaving Mycroft alone in her very expensive, very lovely BMW, dressed in haute couture fashion befitting Princess Diana herself and with a ring in her clasp purse worth exactly $48.5 million American dollars, a vast sum which was still a pittance in comparison to what just having a few hours of Grace's company over dinner at The Dorchester Hotel was worth.

How could she be so selfish!

She could feel her emotions taking over, and she was tearful and driving too fast when she called the concierge of The Dorchester and said, with choking sobs punctuating every word, "I need to cancel my reservations. For two. For...Mycroft Holmes and Grace Lestrade." She sniffled and fought to regain her composure, a feat that was impossible. A quick check in the rear view mirror revealed her mascara was smeared across her sharp, pale cheek bone. "We won't be having dinner."

"Very well, ma'am."

"It's a terrible thing, isn't it, being forced to cancel such a delightful meal at such short notice..."

"Ma'am?"

"I mean, what is it with the world that it has to take on such selfish whims and good people can't even do something as simple as have a nice dinner together because idiots won't stop killing each other. It's a bloody miserable bore is what it is, a nasty cruelty that ricochets all over everything, an arterial spray of evil that such monstrous, unthinking oafs can't even begin to detect..."

"I...Ma'am, I'll just cancel your reservation."

"Yes, that would be best." Mycroft wiped hastily at her wet cheeks, smearing her mascara tinted sorrow into the hollow of her palm. "Thank you."

There was nothing else to do now except go home, only she didn't want to go to her expensive condominium with its neighbour of polished chrome and glass, an unwelcome upgrade that went against her baroque preferences. So when she found herself taking a sharp left to head towards the squalid slums of Enfield, on pricey wheels with a precious blue diamond in her clutch purse, she felt a sense of uneasy peace over the fact Grace would need to face her when she got home. They would have words. Significant ones. She'd make tea, she'd have it ready. She'd make Grace know that Mycroft Holmes is a woman to be reckoned with. Mycroft Holmes took precedence over the dead.

Her stomach growled in hunger. She wondered if Grace had any crisps in her cupboard.

She sighed at the inevitability that she wouldn't. At least there was the fish and chip shop that sold half decent pizza just beneath her flat. She'd order an extra large with all the vegetables double loaded, and she'd put the oven on so Grace could have it still warm when she got home. Microwaved crust tasted awful.

She pulled into the darkness of Enfield, her sleek car cheapened by the reflected poverty that slid across its equally black surface.

 


	2. corpses and clubbing

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter two

Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade glared at her cell phone before pressing it back tight against her ear, her thin patience long spent. Sure, calling Mycroft a bint was a dig she was going to suffer for later, but damn the woman could be so pushy, ignoring plain facts when it came to her creature comforts. Behind Grace, Manny was snapping open a middle aged man's grey corpse with a pair of bolt cutters, the ribcage splitting apart like macabre butterfly wings.

"Inspector Lestrade, you need to see this."

"Tomorrow, Crofty," she said with finality into the phone and hung up.

The stench of death had more to do with association than it did with actual decay, especially in the morgue of St. Mary's hospital, where Manny Jenkins, the coroner, plied her trade. Low cielings and with minimal lighting save for the spotlight over her gurney, surrounded by surgical green tiled walls and various garden tools, Manny in her bloodsoaked rubber apron over her blue scrubs and yellow gumboots on her feet looked like she stepped off the scene of a slasher film and was ready for another victim. It didn't help the image when she propped the bolt cutters at the end of the gurney then leaned over the corpse, sniffing its empty body cavity.

Grace wasn't so keen to get a whiff of human detrius, so she hung back, waiting for the big reveal. "What have you got, Manny?"

"It's what I don't have," Manny said, grinning up at her. She had a perpetual cheerful smile, her long blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail on the top of her head that swung like a cheerleader's. Manny was born in Winsconsin and never lost her All American Girl looks which were far more suited to driving a minivan and picking up kids from soccer practise than sinking her face into the sour flora of a cadaver. She had moved to London with a boyfriend almost ten years ago, but that tryst was long over while her love for pathology remained. She was grossly overqualified, having worked for morgues in Detroit, Los Angeles and Ft. Lauderdale, where tracing the path of bullets was her specialty.

"The Chief says you're thinking of taking a holiday in Florida again this summer. I hope this doesn't mean you're planning on relocating to sunnier skies and sandy beaches. We got beaches here, too, you know. And they're free of alligators, though we do have the occasional aggressive chav who wants you to keep your eyes off her boyfriends."

"I traded in bikini lines for pasty studio tans ages ago, Grace. Besides, I'm passionate about surgery, not ammunition. Florida was boring, I got tired of labelling bullets. At least here there's some variety, even if it's ninety percent heart disease and ten percent homicide." She gave Grace that whimsical grin that made her look far younger than her thirty-five years. "And then there's these guys. Stuff like this is what gets me hot. Go on, don't be shy, have a good sniff."

She pointed into the corpse and Grace reluctantly complied. Instead of reeling back from the sickly sweet stench of decay she was expecting, she was drawn into an aroma that was both caustic and antiseptic. She pulled away, frowning, her throat burning.

"Is that...?"

"Formaldehyde," Manny said, still grinning over the opened corpse. "They've all been dead a long while and were partially embalmed. I say partially because of the empty hole here in their chests, where all the organs are supposed to be bagged."

She stood silent in the morgue, staring at the four gurneys and four opened chest cavities and wondered what demon she pissed off this week to give her this kind of gruesome puzzle.

The challenge of it was one that followed her all day long, starting early in the afternoon when the New Scotland Yard got the call that bodies had been found in an abandoned building on the lip of the Jetty. Four to be precise, laid out neatly in parallel lines on the muck floor of a decaying warehouse, the mother on the far left side, the father on the right, and the two elementary school aged children between them. The sight of an entire family, dead, laid out like that, fully clothed and looking like they were sleeping if you didn't take in the waxy grey hue of their skin, made Grace retch. She hadn't eaten all day, early morning coffee still crawling up the back of her throat, tainted with bile.

"Makes hunting down cause of death a pain in the ass," Manny said, shaking her head. "But from the conditions of the bodies and the pristine look of them, with no signs of chemical burns in the throat to indicate poison or broken tracheas to indicate strangling, or even bullet wounds, I'm willing to bet my money it was carbon monoxide poisoning. Takes out whole families and makes for nice, clean corpses."

Grace scratched the back of her head, the gaping hole in the father's chest full of questions. "If they'd been embalmed, what the hell were they doing on the floor of a warehouse down the backside of the Jetty?" She frowned, staring at the father's open chest and at the other three bodies that had the same splayed open butterflied chests, the two children no older than six or seven. A boy and a girl. The mom, a frail woman the size of a willow reed, the father, somewhat athletic but with a thin layer of greasy yellow fat just under the skin at his stomach, suggesting he was slightly overweight. All of them hollowed out, embalmed but not buried, and then abandoned.

"Should we be calling this murder?" Grace asked, and Manny shrugged.

"Dunno. There's no identification and it's unlikely they were British citizens and not just because they're Asian. The clothes they are wearing are labelled with specific Chinese characters, unlike imports which are labelled with English lettering. They could be tourists, the whole family being affected would indicate that. I'd like to say it was the work of a panicked Bed & Breakfast owner, and hoo boy, some of those places are so chock full of bad air your lungs want to leap out and take a walk over the Thames to clean out. But the empty chests and the fact they are already embalmed is a real mind bender. They've been dead a while, four or five days at least, maybe even a week. I might be able to get more info on what funeral home they came from based on the preserving formula used, but those guys protect their recipes like the Colonel guards his spices." She placed her hands on her slender hips, her heels clicking on the worn linoleum floor. "Was that Mycroft on the phone earlier?"

Grace couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes. "Yeah. She's in a fit because I'm missing a night out. Anniversary dinner at The Dorchester Hotel."

Manny leapt on this as she knew she would, her grin a polished white that glowed past her slightly tanned skin. She'd be heading for a tanning bed again soon, Grace thought. Like most of her type, courting skin cancer wasn't nearly as terrible as completely abandoning a California inspired aesthetic. "That's so sweet! You should have made the time, it's not like these folks are going to get any deader and there's not much more you can do today, not until the chemical screens come back from the lab." Her wide, glowing white grin bit down on a giggle. "Is she still doing her special 'work'?"

Grace bristled. "You know I don't talk about that."

"So she is."

"Rumours, Manny. She's just a suspected associate."

"Of the number one suspect for the past eleven years, they're convinced she's the Blue Danube's girlfriend. Tickles me every time someone mentions it. If they only knew!" She giggled over the irony. "Is Powell still giving you problems?"

Detective Sergeant Martin Powell of the Special Crimes Division was the lead investigator into the mysterious Blue Danube--the nickname for a notorious jewel thief who snuck into the homes of the one percent and pilfered their most prized trinkets. That Mycroft, of no real financial means and yet was able to live like those vastly wealthy victims who made house insurance premiums go up, was a suspected girlfriend covering for the thief meant nothing to Grace. So far no one knew who the real guilty one was, and Powell resented Grace's odd 'friendship' with Mycroft, even going so far as to reveal to Chief Wilcox the growing relationship between the lowly homicide inspector and the fiendishly wealthy femme fatale Mycroft Holmes. Chief Wilcox responded with a pamphlet on affirmative action for Powell to read and forced him to take a quiz on it that he had to pass with a perfect score. Powell had been after Grace's neck ever since.

Grace sighed, and felt sick thinking on Powell and his rat shaped little weasel face and the way he hobnobbed with the political elite, going for expensive evening dinners with high ranking MPs and sniffing around Chief Superintendent Wilcox's position like a carrion eater looking to pluck scraps of meat off a bone. Powell already boasted of two BBC productions based on his high profile cases, one of which was the Blue Danube.

Mycroft had found it exceptionally rude that Mark Gatiss was cast in the role. "The Blue Danube may be a lot of things, Grace, but he's hardly a darkened ginger. If I was to speculate, and profess certain knowledge of that rascal, I'd say with full confidence that the man is free of freckles and pique. And what are they thinking, getting that Shia LeBauf to play Powell? If he was going to put a paper bag over his head in embarassment for any role, it should be for that one! Dear me, his fake Welsh accent keeps dipping into Delhi telemarketer. It's distracting."

"You fared better than me," Grace had said, pointing at the pockmarked profile of Philip Glenister sneering at Shia LeBoef's frantic insistence that the Blue Danube had struck again, and that it was only so much time before the great thief tired of stealing jewels and began stealing lives. "I like to think I don't have quite that many pounds attached to my middle, and I'm not sure why they cast a man for it. Guess they figure my gruff nature doesn't translate into tits and arse very well. They got my indifference down pat, though. Glad that's not in question."

Mycroft stood in front of her eighty inch flat screen Sanyo plasma TV (One must always mention proportion and material might when in Mycroft's prescence, for it is always excessive, to the point of comedy. The woman has no understanding of subtle consumption.) and fixed Grace into a piercing, ice blue glare. "They most certainly did not 'get' you, Grace, for this sweaty parody is as representative of you as Shia LeBoef's man-bun. You are a rumpled, unshaven and filthy Rupert Graves pushing the edge of his fifties, I can accept no less."

Grace frowned. "I'm thirty-nine!"

"Or perhaps his early sixties, which is of course speculation as the actor isn't there yet, but he does wear a certain aged incorrigble nature well, as do you. Why are you staring up at me with your mouth gaping like that, like I've made you chomp on soap?"

"I'm thinking the crack writing team at the BBC has got something on you. A sixty year old Rupert Graves? Are you bloody trying to kill the last shreds of my ego? And have you noticed that's a male actor as well?"

"What do you want me to say?  You aren't Judy Dench."

"That's *Lady* Judy Dench, to you..."

"You're wearing your department's soccer team t-shirt and it has a hideous grass stain on the logo."

Grace glanced down at the printed words 'Murderball 2012' smeared with green. "So?"

"I rest my case. Your tomboyish nature translates within our sexist media into the male of the species. Even if you do have significantly lovelier breasts."

Manny cleared her throat and the pleasant memory morphed into the dank, basement confines that housed the inexplicably dead. "I take it from your silence that means Powell is being a dick, as usual."

"He's been putting pressure on Chief Superintendent Wilcox to have me placed under 'disciplinary measures' though exactly what Wilcox is supposed to reprimand me for is up in the air. I'm in homicide, I don't give a rat's ass about how easy it is to pickpocket the filthy rich. If there's no murders involved, I don't have any reason to care about Powell's problems, and he should keep his runny nose out of mine."

Manny was bent over the father's corpse once again, a pair of thick goggles making her eyes six times their size. "Sleeping with the enemy is considered bad form in both social and work circles."

"You've met Mycroft," Grace countered. "She's as dangerous as a cotton ball. She's a bloody vegan, for fuck's sake. She can't stand seeing any living thing in pain, be it physical or emotional. She cried for an hour after watching Babe because she felt the farmer was demeaning to the pig and long term Babe would have PTSD because Babe would always wonder, in the back of his swine mind, when the farmer's conditional love would turn him into bacon. Her words, Manny. She gives a disgusting amount of money to PETA every year. The only thing bleeding in Mycroft's prescence is her own damned heart."

If her tirade was meant to exonerate Mycroft, it was lost on Manny, who now had her cheek pressed against the corpse's throat, her scalpel delicately peeling off tiny shards of skin from the underside of the ribcage. "Interesting," she said, pulling away and bringing the scalpel beneath the overhead light so she could get a better look. Grace was used to this kind of deep inspection, it was why she loved working with Manny best. She never shied away from getting completely immersed in death. "Is that what I think it is?"

Grace felt her stomach flip at the tiny, white granules she'd managed to pluck onto the tip of the scalpel. "The labs will tell us for sure, and I'm not about to give it a taste test. But that got the consistency of cocaine, though it's hard to tell. It could be heroin." She leaned back from the spotlight as did Manny, the living as shadowed now as the dead. "What are we thinking?"

Manny let out a resigned sigh. She placed the granules in a tiny baggie and wrote a series of numbers on it in blue ink before sealing it up. The lab would have the result for them before the week was out, but Grace knew neither of them needed to wait for it to come to the same conclusion.

"Mules," Manny said.

Grace ran her palm over her face, a creeping numbness entering her that she tried to keep at bay. "What do you reckon? Live or dead donors? You still iffy on it being murder?"

"I'm not sure. They could have stolen these cadavors and used them for transport. They're a lot easier to use than actual living people whose bowels explode on airplanes or leave an equally messy murder behind to clean up afterwards. You need clean, intact bodies for it, though, and it doesn't make sense that their organs were cleared out, they were partially embalmed, stuffed and then left in a neat pile for the rats to find. Embalming like this is an awful lot of trouble to go through just to have your artwork end up dumped at the Jetty."

"Lost suitcases," Grace said. She crossed her arms and paced in front of the three other corpses, the smaller ones sending a sick feeling in her gut. It was unlikely they were murdered, and they had died exactly as Manny described, but it still felt sick to her that they had been defiled in this way, as though the memory of who they were could be that easily erased. That everyone was far more anonymous than they realized.

Manny made some notes in her chart before flipping through the one on the father and then going back to the chart on the mother. She gave both their children a cursory inspection before hugging the clipboard close to her chest, her pink mouth pursed cheerfully in thought. "They are Asian corpses, and might even be imports."

"What do you mean?"

"Black market dead people, sort of. You know that guy who does the plastination of the human body and goes around the world with his exhibit. Real eyeball sockets and entire bodies stripped of skin with veins and nerve endings all intact, put in sports poses? Dr. Gunther Von Hagens, I think his name is. Anyway, he gets his corpses wholesale from China on account of not being able to cut through the red tape in Western countries. Sold for science. That might be where these came from, and it's very possible that they may not even be a true family. DNA testing will prove my theory for sure."

"But you said they died of carbon monoxide poisoning."

"I did, and I still think that's a very real possibility. But people there live in high population densities. There might have been a building that had this happen and there was a sudden bumper crop of pristine bodies for bucks. It happens. Some smuggler decided clean corpses were a great way to transport drugs to the UK. Wouldn't surprise me, people are shit." She was quiet a long moment, the steady drip of a tap into a metal sink pinging at odd intervals the only sound in the room.

Grace knew what Manny wanted to ask. Grace didn't want to answer her.

Manny was not a person who shrank from the truth, if anything the corpses in her care demanded it from her, no matter how vile the cuts in their body revealed it. It didn't make it any easier when it was plunked like this between them, a nasty, swollen sore upon London that Grace knew was getting worse.

"We have to be open to the possibility that this is the Crown Cartel sending a message," she said, and Grace let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "These are the kinds of games the Ghost likes to play, he's sadistic enough and you know how he much he gets a kick out of goading you. If the Crown Cartel is involved, I won't rule out murder. I'll try and find out who these people are, even if they were already dead and sold for parts there has to be a record of them being transported from somewhere. A mortician did embalm them, even if he did a half ass job. It was done for speed and to keep them preserved just long enough to get the goods into London. They were carry on bags."

"There would be plane records," Grace said, nodding. "I'll get my team on it, but there's no guarantee they'll find anything. The Ghost knows how to cover his ass. The more likely scenario is that they bought the cadavers and had them transported to another country first, embalmed them and filled them with drugs and then got them into London by sea. But it still doesn't explain why they were dumped at the Jetty. It's an unreadable message."

Manny shrugged. "If the Ghost has a metaphor for you, I'm not getting its meaning either."

"We don't know it's the Crown Cartel for sure," she reminded her, but she hated the way her gut churned, every one of her senses in her body alight with the possibility that this was exactly the cause. If there was one group of murderous pieces of shit she didn't want to deal with, it was the Ghost and his Crown Cartel minions, and they were back in London, setting up shop and selling bad heroin to junkies who ended up in this very morgue. It had been five years since the Crown Cartel had been active, and the last time they had left a swath of death throughout the underbelly of London's Chelsea district, twenty dead junkies, four murdered mid level drug dealers and a well to do real estate tycoon with his hands and head cut off. That last one had started the whole thing, Grace's fight with the Ghost complicated by her need to protect Mycroft.

Tragedy had a messy habit of becoming a tangled tapestry.

"It's late, and I'm ready to close up shop and go home to watch trash TV. That Survivor Antarctica is starting up again, and I'm pretty sure that blonde bitch Riley is going to eat what's left of Ross's frostbitten fingers just so she can get a protein boost for the 'polar swim challenge'. Do the producers of that show know that people can get fatal hypothermia just from a few seconds in that water? I mean, think about it, Antarctica is the coldest place on the planet. I thought for sure they were going to cancel this season when that schoolteacher got her foot eaten by that leopard seal she befriended. Getting pretty wild on these reality shows these days. Amazing the things idiots will do for a free Jeep."

"They should rename it 'Darwin's Race'. Guess who'd win that one?"

Manny shrugged. "A contestant with an extra set of eyes or limbs?"

"Everyone watching it from their couches on the TV staying safe and warm and fat on snacks."

"Sedentary evolution. Survival of the inert. I like it." She cracked her gum and gave Grace a sideways smile. "You calling up Mycroft? It's late and all you have to go to is that shithole you call a flat. Mycroft could have you sleeping in style, you know you want it..."

Grace gave her a terse smile of her own. "Yeah. Sure. Let me know if you find anything else out, okay?"

"I always do. Hey, and Grace?"

"Yeah?"

"I really hope this ain't the Crown Cartel."

"Yeah, Manny. I bloody well hope so, too."

***

_"999, please state your emergency."_

_"Please, you have to help him!" Unintelligble sobs crackled through the phone like static. "Oh God, I think he's dead! He's kind of moving and...Oh God, his neck, his head is... Oh, no, no, no no, no...send someone now, please hurry! Barney & Ulsted, Realtors, of course you know where it is, it's the big building just outside -- in Chelsea. I can't even think, I don't know the intersection, I knew it before I came up and now it's all a blank and I don't do that, ever, I never go blank and I've forgotten everything and I don't know and...It's Mr. Ulstead and there's so much blood and he's, I mean, his hands and his...his neck...I don't know, I don't do well in these situations, not this kind, not when they're dead, and I'm sure he's dead, and there's so much blood and oh God, the blood is just pulsing out of his vein and I'm trying to stop it! I'm trying to stop it! It won't stop! Please send an ambulance! Now!"_

Grace finished her beer and bid the bartender to hit her with another. The dance floor behind her was pulsing with sweaty bodies and bright colours, an old Adam Ant tune remixed into a hip hop riff belting through the massive twin speakers on the other side. Feedback squealed through the air and the partygoers groaned in agony while the DJ quickly fixed the noise. The bar was soaked in spilled drinks, orphaned ice cubes slipping into nothingness in existential puddles. She smeared the edge of one with her fingertip, helping its melting demise along.

Five years and here she was, nursing beer at a shit bar, alone.

"You really are an idiot," she said aloud to herself.

This wasn't their anniversary, they never celebrated that fateful meeting for good reason, and she let Mycroft be the one to pick a better date. June 24th. A nice, happy summer inspired date that the years could point to instead of what originally had brought them together. Grace Lestrade sipped at the drink offered to her with a resigned sigh. She wasn't a social person, not really, she came here because the drinks were dirt cheap and it was only a block away from her shitty flat. The crap music and equally crap DJ made for a humbling understanding that they were all in this human thing together. That meeting Mycroft, the way she did, at a murder scene, was a perfectly normal way to start a romance for a homicide detective. Traumatized, bloodied and sick Mycroft who had spent an inordinate amount of time vomiting in the public washroom outside of Richard Ulsted's top floor office. Sweet Mycroft, who was probably there to steal the large, 40 million dollar ruby studded wine cask Ulsted kept in his whiskey cabinet for good luck and which he brought out for clients purchasing billion dollar properties.

A bouncing group of youths journeyed up to the bar and jostled Grace's shoulder as they shouted at the bartender. The lip of her pint clinked against her teeth. The bartender gave her an apologetic look before wiping the counter and tossing his white towel over his shoulder. Grace didn't have the energy to be annoyed and besides, it was a Friday night and The Rack was packed. She thought about ordering some food, but she changed her mind and decided on a second pint of Rickard's Red for dinner instead.

She was getting a good buzz on when she turned in her seat to survey the crowd, the majority of them in their twenties and looking to get laid. She was too old, and she knew she looked like a narc, hindering the side businesses that happened in the bathroom stalls at the other end of the bar where the Molly flowed free. The Rack used to be a pub but now it was a proper dance bar, full of flashing lights and pumping bass and scantily clad girls who cursed and drank, thinking the high heels they wore made them women and not chavs playing dress up. A tall blonde wearing a halter top and a pair of jean shorts that rose up her ass in a 'v' shape winked at her from the dance floor, her pink lips suggestively licking around the straw of her drink. Grace turned away, her focus back on the counter of the bar, on the rings that led her gaze to her already half empty pint. She concentrated on it, watching the dew along the outside of the glass slide down its surface like an escaped tear.

She didn't want to think about it but the facts welled up within her, sickening and vile, too obvious not to face. Four bodies, used as suitcases for heroin or coke, or both, or something worse. The Crown Cartel had to be involved, they were active again in London. Those wouldn't be the only bodies she'd be stuck sniffing with Manny in the morgue.

At least their hands weren't missing. Or their heads. Which told her that identifying them wasn't the Ghost's concern, and Manny was probably right. Corpses for hire.

She wondered about those people on Manny's gurneys, about the kids and the slight young woman who was supposed to be their mother. Invisible and throwaway, all four of them had been born and cared for by one of the many billions of people in the world, they each had a mother and extended families, they had been loved. One could assume so, anyway, there were no marks indicating abuse. An unfortunate accident had done them in and they were gone, their bodies whisked away and paid for, given over to science in the hopes they would give something back. But the Crown Cartel had abused that gift, they had stolen the last remnants of their time on earth and enacted indignity upon them.

It was the lack of respect that bothered Grace the most. Because they were dirt poor and anonymous the Ghost found them expendable. Alive or dead, there was no difference to the Ghost save for the fact they got his illegal goods onto the streets of Grace's city, ready to flood it with the Crown Cartel's reckless chemical brand of death.

She took a final long gulp, emptying her drink before she tapped the bar, ready to tab out. She tossed some pound notes on the counter and slid out of her seat, a slight vertigo hitting her as she tried to navigate her way through the rainbow colours swirling around her, laughter and shouting and idiots hopping from one foot to the other trying to dance to 'Can't Touch This' near knocking her over. It wasn't until she was finally outside that she was able to breathe, the dank air of a summer night in inner city London hitting her with all its foul, garbage strewn stench. She felt her stomach lurch and she took two steps before leaning against the building housing The Rack, heaving up bile onto black garbage bags. She really should have eaten something.

Maybe it was true, she really didn't know how to take care of herself. Mycroft had taken up that slack and had her on a strict regimen of fine wine and gourmet meals she'd whipped up herself, but Grace was a dumpster diver at heart and in times of stress she found herself in The Rack, getting sick. Getting drunk.

Five years. That's how long it's been since she'd shown up at Ulstead's office and found Mycroft covered in blood, her howling panic echoing down the grey carpeted hallway. Ulstead was dead, of course, though as corpses go he was pretty fresh. He had all the calling cards of the usual Crown Cartel visit, hands lopped off, head partially dismembered. Grace told Mycroft that she probably interrupted the murderer's attempt to chop Ulstead's head off, which was why the blood was still flowing when she'd arrived.

This didn't make Mycroft feel better, of course. Instead she went into a renewed tailspin of panic over how closely she had come to having her own precious hands and head cut off in kind.

One look at her and Grace had dismissed Mycroft as a suspect. The million dollar wine flask had been dropped into a puddle of blood, and she was confident Mycroft's handprint was going to be all over it. Grace was a coveted detective for a reason, and she took in Mycroft's expensive, but dark pant suit in variations of silk, the sleek way her body moved, the sharp features on pale skin, dark, curly auburn hair cut short in a styled bob, parted to the side so it made a soft halo that framed the tiny bones of her face. She possessed the kind of outline one found not on fashion runways but in old art deco illustrations. It made her seem a little inhuman.

The modus operandi Grace walked into fit the description of the Blue Danube to a dotted 'i' and a crossed 't'. Powells was set to cry victory and give himself a full on baptism with the poor, traumatized thieving siren's tears, if he would ever be smart enough to believe Mycroft was the culprit and not some nebulous, invisible boyfriend. If he could, there'd be a promotion in it for the little weasel, and Grace knew that Powell was playing all the political cards he could snatch to skip a few steps to become Superintendent, eager to oust Chief Wilcox from his unsteady perch. Taking down the Blue Danube was going to make Powell their boss.

Powell had no time for homicide, and he'd been pushing for old cold cases to get put on the discontinued list, stating that it freed up time for the few detectives they'd managed to keep on the payroll. He was of the mind that murder investigations ought to have a logical time limit, and detectives who couldn't keep up with the unravelling had no business earning a paycheque from the Yard.

Powell's own Special Crimes Unit didn't have a whole hell of a lot of work to do these days, the white collar crime they investigated too backed up by big money to bring those kinds of villains, the ones who starved nations and sold single mothers to the highest bidder, to any kind of justice.

"What's your name?" Grace asked the fussy, slender but rather muscular woman sniffling before her, bones too big for the fragility that coursed across her features.

"M-Mycroft Holmes."

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Holmes. I am Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade of the homicide division of NSY." She glanced back at the office now flooded with white jumpsuits courtesy of the forensics team. It would be hours before they were done and getting Mycroft Holme's statement was now her top priority. But there was no way in hell she was bringing this woman into the station, not with Powell sniffing around, seeking out who had stirred what shit. If Mycroft Holmes was the Blue Danube as she suspected, handing her over to Powell would result in the obliteration of her own homicide case. In the heirarchy of priorities, a ghastly murder took precedence over Powell's ambitions and ego any day.

"I'll give you a lift home," she said. "You can give me your witness statement on the way."

Memory glazed over the horrors of that night in sticky clumps of sugar, for Mycroft had been so genuinely scared and weirdly tiny in the passengar seat of Grace's Met issued BMW, her pale throat bobbing up and down frantically as she tried to swallow her panic. They'd driven, of course, to Belgravia where Mycroft still owned a two and a half million pound flat, the Victorian facade echoed within its opulent confines. Red walls met black and white vintage tiles, Roman inspired pillars bursting in white clumps of engraved flowers on the vaulted ceiling. The staircase leading up to the four bedrooms on the second floor curled with sultry baroque excess from the front entrance of the flat. Prized artwork, mostly Dutch, adorned the walls. Mycroft had a penchant for hyper realism, specifically woodland animals with the occasional lion and leapord thrown in. Unlike many who collected such works, Mycroft Holmes clearly had no interest in still life depicting scenes of dead rabbits and deer. Her preference was for vibrant studies of hares and muscular jungle and forest beasts that were weirdly disproportionate.

Grace followed her into the flat that was built for a specific sort of queen, feeling like a rumpled piece of paper. Mycroft grabbed a decanter of brandy from a low table beside the mantel of her front room fireplace, and bid the detective to join her.

"I'm still on duty." Grace nodded at the glass in Mycroft's hand, hungry for it but not enough to tempt a conduct write up. Powell was at the Yard and he'd love nothing more than to have an excuse to force Grace on suspension. "You go right ahead, though. You look like you need it."

"Thank you." Mycroft downed her sizeable drink in one gulp, the tumbler near slammed back onto the small side table. She almost poured himself another, only to hesitate and refrain. "What do you want me to tell you? I went into the office and found him like that. Hell of a thing, seeing a person in the last throes of death. I'm not usually squeamish about taking charge when such things happen, I'm usually very good in a crisis, a bit of problem solver, actually...But there was so much blood and there was nothing that could be done..." Trembling fingertips brushed the lip of the empty tumbler. "How much truth do you want from me, Detective? I fear I may be at as much of an end as Mr. Ulstead."

Grace shrugged, pacing around the ground floor and looking up at the way the moulding circled a sky light high up in the ceiling. An ornate white swirl surrounded the round window, full of carved leaves and flowers, a custom job that must have cost Mycroft Holmes half of Grace's wages for the year. "You got a real nice place, here, Miss Holmes, dunno why you'd want to sell it."

"Please, call me Mycroft.'

"That's an odd name for a woman."

"I didn't pick it. My mother is an odd woman. She was determined to have a boy and my name is my punishment for not being one. My brother is named Sherlock, which is a girl's name. He earned it the same way, only in reverse."

"I see."

"You think I'm selling this place." She cast a cautious glance at Grace. "You assume that's why I went to visit Mr. Ulstead."

"He did specialize in these sorts of properties." Grace Lestrade pursed her lips. "Was there some other reason?" She paced in front of one of the paintings, a misshapen lion that was a two dimensional charicature despite the rich detail of its rippling flank. "A wine flask worth millions, maybe?" She smiled at the stricken look Mycroft gave her and waved the detection away. "I could care less about that, I know you didn't do the bastard in and theivery ain't my department. There's bigger problems on the horizon than some rich bint's misplaced rocks. What you found tonight is a specific calling card and I don't have to have reams of forensics to tell me what happened to Ulstead, I got enough information from what I've seen already. I just got to ask you, what is it you know of the Crown Cartel?"

"I...I don't know anything."

"You're sure about that?"

"It doesn't involve me." Mycroft wrung her slender hands and refused to meet Grace's concentrated scrutiny. "My brother, Sherlock, he fancies himself a bit of a detective himself. He runs a small private detective business on Baker Street, though I must say, he is hardly what one would call a proper gumshoe. People come to him with their problems and it's rare that he ever has to leave his messy flat. Most of their issues are regarding infedility and missing money, and by carefully listening to their stories he's able to deduce a solution. I wouldn't allow him to vouch for my character, however. He has a terrible habit of calling me lazy and unable to act in times of duress when needed, but one always accuses others of that which vexes oneself the most." Mycroft sighed and poured herself another drink after all. "My brother got his drugs from a dealer who worked for the Crown Cartel."

Grace took this information in, and considering how Mycroft made her living she figured chasing an adrenaline high was a family trait. "So they sold him heroin..."

Mycroft shot a Grace a shocked look. "Heavens, no! Why would you think that?"

"It's what they do...Drug dealers. Cartels. I've been mopping up heroin overdose victims all bloody week, these guys are the main suppliers. I can't keep up with the carnage."

Mycroft took a gulp of her drink. "My brother is an intelligent man, seven years my junior and a Mensa champion, if one trusts their assessments, which I don't necessarily do. I am, in fact, the smart one. He is an obsessive researcher and is well aware of all of the negative effects of opiods upon the human body, its addictive properties and its short lived bursts of acuity that the high it gives provides and the long term lows. No, my brother does not indulge in such things." She clutched her drink with a firm hand. "He's a pothead. Dedicated to weed so fiercely he has Peter Tosh's former Jamaican home address in his dusty rolodex. Both Sherlock and his best friend, Dr. John Watson, wile away their days listening to strangers moan about obscure problems and then solve them through a thick haze of skunky clouds."

Grace raised a brow. "'Doctor' John Watson?"

"Retired. He was in the army, stationed in Afghanistan and was injured during his second tour. He was a surgeon until a serious shoulder wound took care of that. When he returned home to London he was prescribed medical marijuana to help him deal with PTSD. He's on disability and I think he has more than a shoulder injury wrong with him, I'm fairly certain he met with serious head trauma over there as well. He met Sherlock when he was hunting for stronger GMO bud. They struck up a friendship, Sherlock had an extra room to let, now they work together."

"A couple of whodunit Cheech and Chongs, then."

"Withnail and I. The flat is disgusting."

She'd laughed, then. Grace still feels her heart constrict at the memory of it, the shy incline of Mycroft's head, the breathy reluctance of her throat, the fleeting, pale joy at her lips. Grace is pretty damn sure that's the moment she fell in love with Mycroft Holmes. Even then, it was utter madness not to.

"The problems arose when the dealer kept wanting to upsell the harder drugs and was getting annoyed at Sherlock and Watson's dedication to tri-leafed organics. Eventually, the dealer refused to sell to them any more and they found another local supplier who sold his plants out of an aquarium hydroponics system in his bathroom. Their original dealer was found dead a week later and Sherlock deduced the Crown Cartel has a rather intense commission quota."

"That took a Mensa champion to figure that out?" Grace asked.

Mycroft still wore that pleasant little smile, her fingertips drumming along the side of the glass. "You'd have to meet my brother to understand. He's a...Different sort of person. With that information he was able to infiltrate the network of drug dealers working in his area who had Crown Cartel connections and eventually found the man responsible for his original pot dealer's death. The killer is now serving six life sentences in prison thanks to my brother's involvement in the case." She took a delicate sip of her drink. "That was three years ago, in the Crown Cartel's infancy. Sherlock still gets daily death threats from them. I have been very careful to keep myself invisible from the Cartel."

She wasn't doing a good job of remaining concealed right now, Grace thought as she walked the small distance from The Rack to the fish and chips shop across the street and her own flat perched above it. All the lights were on in her living room, a clear sign that Mycroft had invaded her home. She didn't have a key, she never needed one nor asked for it. There wasn't a lock that Mycroft Holmes couldn't pick and no door that she couldn't find a way to open. Grace braced herself as she made her way up the metal fire escape stairs in the alley beside her flat, her heavy steps shuddering steel.

She slid off her seersucker trench coat when she got into the flat, closing and locking the door behind her and tossing the jacket onto the blue leather couch by the entrance. The place was spotless and smelled vaguely of lemons. Mycroft had a fastidious clean streak, and it infected Grace's usually comfortably messy home whenever she visited. A low heat from the oven in the adjoining kitchen indicated food was waiting for her, and though she was annoyed that she wasn't going to crash and get a proper night's sleep after all, Grace was grateful for the generous offering. She ran her hand through the short crop of her hair, blonde streaks in every shade sliding through her strong fingers. She turned off the oven and opened the door with a thick tea towel and took out the pizza, her fingers singed as she dropped the pizza pan onto the burners with a clatter.

She sighed.

No cheesy gooey goodness here. Not even a whisper of parmesan. Bloody salad on bread. Mycroft and her bloody vegan bullshit crap, for fuck's sake...

She opened the fridge door and found a chilled bottle of very fancy, expensive red merlot and the little flare of anger instantly dissipated. No matter. The cheese always did her stomach in, anyway. Wine, a bit of this bruschetta whatever shit. It was nice.

A rustle in the bedroom caught her attention and with the wine bottle still in hand, Grace entered the room, finding Mycroft tucked beneath her bedcovers, the dim light from a desklamp on the windowsill the only illumination in the room. She propped the bottle of wine on the floor to keep the door open and then slid onto the bed, Mycroft's body warm and soft beneath the duvet and crisp cotton sheets. The way Mycroft curled into her touch made a stab of desire course through Grace's body, and she wrapped her stronger, thicker arms around the slight figure within the bed, her face buried in the auburn curls of Mycroft's short hair. She'd showered. She smelled like vanilla.

She nibbled Mycroft's ear, earning a sleepy groan. "I stink like death and desperation. I went to The Rack after I was done at the morgue. It was a rough day and night for homicide, four bodies found at the Jetty, all lined up in a row."

A small moue of discontent met her as Mycroft rolled onto her back to face her, worry etched in sharp lines across her wide brow. She was sleepy and malleable, and Grace willed her to fall back into that easy slumber. "Four?" Mycroft propped herself up on her elbows until she was nose to nose with Grace. "What happened?"

Grace took her mouth rather than explain it. She was too tired and Mycroft's pleasant body was easing her into a calmer sort of exhaustion, one that would allow her to sleep. She stripped to her underwear, snapping off her bra and snatching a t-shirt from the top of the overflowing laundry bin near her dresser. She slid the t-shirt on before getting under the covers with Mycroft and pulling her into another warm, soothing embrace.

'How did I survive without this woman?' Grace thought, hot kisses meeting her lips, a tongue exploring and then holding back, intuitively understanding that sleep was what was needed here, not sex. Grace wrapped her arms around Mycroft's shoulders, pulling her soft warmth close. Contented sighs filled her dreams. Happiness coursed across the inside of her skull, like the shining pinpricks of diamonds.


	3. diamonds and dogs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of life and a bit of trouble, it's always waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive me for what I did to poor John. But Sherlock and John really are complete morons in this story. I did warn it is an original take!
> 
> Oh, and I suppose I should warn for drug use, specifically weed, though that is mentioned in the tags above (points upwards, in smoke)

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter three

The thing about Mycroft Holmes is that once she's got an idea formed she has to pounce full on it, fearful that any delay will result in protracted inertia. Grace suffered this habit with the usual patience, though it was fairly thin this morning, she was lacking a good breakfast (she was starving, hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon) and there was no coffee (she always bought it on her way to work and chugged it as she hopped up the stairs to the main entrance of the Yard). She was shoved out of bed and forced to get dressed by a rushed Mycroft, who was already poured into a prim pinstripe grey dress skirt that hugged just below her knobby knees and a matching jacket that accentuated her wide shoulders while cinching in at her usually shapeless waist. She had the polished air of an upper level civil servant, prim and powerful, one who could easily have found herself slotted into a seat beside the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher herself had she been born in an earlier era. Still, there were some traces of femininity edging their way through, like the way her graceful white throat peeked through rose coloured silk, the gentle folds of the shirt completing her suited ensemble. Dark auburn hair with wavy locks was parted to the side, a fashionably short dainty cut that framed the delicate features of her face. An aquiline long nose she complained was too pointed. Pale lips that were wide and soft and painted in a neutral shade of coral. Blue eyes that sometimes flickered into green depending on the lighting in the room. They were a vibrant azure this morning.

She appeared confident, a self assuredness that was mistaken for coldness in a woman and was the standard issue for those who dared to join their male counterparts in the boy's club in the CEO boardroom, which was odd since Mycroft rarely found herself in those stuffy realms of money and ambition. Mycroft's finances were fiercely guarded, personal treasures. From the way she was done up, all business and not a hint of pleasure, Grace knew Mycroft was heading for the bank that morning and was making a substantial addition to her already bursting financial portfolio. She looked ready to take the coffers of entire countries, let alone rebuff the suggestions for her finances given to her by the bank manager, who would look at her massive bank balance and swoon over her in deference.

If Mycroft hid her massive wealth in offshore companies and the occasional government investment, she was an invisible entity of influence, one who had no time for the guffawing bravado of those who lurked in the City of London, driving fancy cars on Lombard Street and downing martinis while bored women sat in their geriatric laps. Mycroft managed her own destiny. Investors often complained she had balls in her skirts that were the size of Wall Street itself.

This was not the woman who clutched the headboard not an hour ago, whimpering into a protracted climax as Grace made a meal of the salty sweetness of her. Grace felt a smirk grow at that recent memory, and from the small blush that suddenly flushed across Mycroft's cheeks as she looked on her she was clearly revisiting that moment, too.

Mycroft tossed clothes at her. "Get dressed, we're going to mine."

"I want to shower first," Grace protested.

"You can shower in one of the three en suites in my house. Do you not have any blouses here that aren't missing buttons or aren't wrinkled or don't have coffee stains?"

Grace rolled her eyes at Mycroft's disdainful scrutiny of her scant wardrobe. Most of what she owned was in their shared closet in the Belgravia estate. "The jackets hide them, and the lads at the Yard look worse than I do. We're an overworked lot in the homicide department, Crofty, too busy looking into the murk of the dead to care about the judgement of the living. Hand me those black socks in the top drawer, the ones with the piano keys on them."

Mycroft tossed them at her, and Grace caught them before they hit her square between the eyes. She slid them on along with the rest of her clothes, feeling a layer of grime from both the club the night before and the lingering unease of the morgue. She'd change again once they got to Belgravia and she'd had a chance to clean up properly. There was no point asking Mycroft to wait a moment longer, Grace knew, for the woman was already marching out of the flat in her no nonsense beige pumps, the keys to her BMW Z4 twirled around an elegant, pale finger. Grace was still tucking in her shirt when she followed her out the side door that was the entrance to her flat and down the steel steps to the ground, a pair of worn Converse sneakers heavily stomping after her. The steel steps shuddered from the effort. "A right hell of a rush, don't know why you can't wait until I at least run a comb through my hair or brush my teeth, or remind myself I'm even awake yet. I know you don't like the flat, but it's not like the walls are going to bite you."

Mycroft paused at the driver's side door of her fancy car, and bid Grace to get in on the passenger side. "On the contrary, there is plenty about this place that 'bites'. I'm quite tired of visiting you here, and I do not appreciate you escaping to this place every time we have a small spat. It's like you're seeking an out, and it's unnecessary. Our association has continued for five years, and you come here rarely and only under duress, so I know there is no sentimental reason for you to keep it. Move in with me, officially. Give this ugly little hole up, it's a ridiculous expense on your budget."

Grace didn't want to argue the point, that this was her safe house when Powell started sniffing around the Blue Danube and poking at her personal life, especially since it involved the cool Queen Nitrogen herself, Mycroft Holmes, rumoured to be the famous thief's former paramour. A place like this, separated from Mycroft, it was a sign that their lives were distinct from one another, she could argue that Powell was exaggerating, even outright lying about her own entanglements. It wouldn't have much weight in the long run, she knew, because the truth was she did spend most of her time at the Belgravia estate, the big beautiful bed too inviting, especially with the soft lighting and the way Mycroft's silk camisole often slid half off her shoulder, revealing a pert breast. Ah, and there were those thoughts again, and Grace blushed, and Mycroft gave her a secretive little smile that suggested she knew *exactly* what the detective was thinking, and damn if she wasn't sick in love with this gorgeous woman and her ability to be so clairvoyant.

"We're going straight to our home," Mycroft stated. She held up a hand to Grace's protests as she wound the car up the street and out of Enfield to areas of the city that had far less crime. "I consider these forays to this neighbourhood a version of camping, and since I absolutely abhor 'roughing it', I am eager to get back to my creature comforts, one of which is instant hot running water and an absence of fleas. You will shower. I will make coffee and breakfast, as per our routine, and you will eat and you will be well rested and in a sound, positive state of mind before you head to work. Is this clear?"

Grace groaned and lolled the back of her head on the passenger seat's cushion. "You're so bloody bossy in the morning."

"So no argument from you, then?"

"I'm not even awake, Crofty. You've kidnapped a sleepwalker."

Mycroft adjusted her rear view mirror and drove just a little bit too fast out of Pimlico and across the Mall and down towards Piccadilly where she would veer off to the west of the roundabout and head into the heart of Belgravia. She didn't own one of the many condominium styled Victorian flats that lined its wealthy streets, but instead had managed to snag a standalone house with the bargain price tag of $2.4 million pounds, a sum paid in full. The price for the four bedroom house had been low due to both an economic downturn at the time of purchase as well as the fact it had suffered a serious kitchen fire that had taken out the back half of the estate. A further million in renovations still made the place a bargain. The current going rate was close to ten million pounds.

Grace didn't care a whit about the place, and found it too baroque for her liking, the weird paintings of disproportionate animals giving it a cartoon gothic feel that she couldn't shake no matter how many months she slept under its roof. The worst was the black panther in the large, eighteenth century painting above their bed, its body elongated until it was serpentine, its teeth like those of a neolithic sabre cat and not quite of their world as they knew it.

"It's a rare, commissioned piece by the artist George Stubbs. His most famous work, an inked rendition of a rhinoceros, has an equal excessive quality to it. He had never seen a panther before and was simply illustrating eye witness accounts from aristocratic adventurers. Many of the animals in the paintings I have on display are painted from such accounts and their forms suffer this dysmorphia as a result. I find them to be fascinating studies of our memories and personal impressions upon that which we are told." Mycroft had poured herself a glass of wine, the soft light of the bedroom blunting the sharp edges of her personality, making her long body compliant amidst crisp cotton sheets. "They should interest you, Grace, for they are portraits drawn from witnesses and not from the artist's own memory, the details placed upon them with care so as to give the subject an aggressive accuracy. They are composite sketches and yes, in the case of this panther, of a murderer. It is said that this particular great cat wiped out an entire Amazon expedition team save for Lord Harding, who funded the trip. That must have been one hungry kitty, don't you think?"

Grace's empty stomach rumbled and she was brought back to the present as Mycroft parked the car in her driveway, bright morning sunlight blinding her through the windshield. Grace stumbled out of the car and slammed the door shut behind her, the gentle beep of the locks slipping into place. Mycroft was already standing at the base of her driveway, car keys still hooked into the crook of her thumb as she stared across the street at her neighbour's house.

She was positively murderous.

"Absolutely vile." She actually snarled, her lip curling up one side, a low growl of distaste leaving her. "A pillar made of brass and glass, really? The more it comes together, the more I'm forced to endure the horror of it. Is there nothing that can be done? You're sure I can't make another complaint with the City Of London Planning Department and get another district surveyor here? Look at this monstrosity, they've completely destroyed the outside Victorian facade and now the whole Dickens ambiance of the street is ruined!"

Grace shoved her hands into the pockets of her loose black dress pants and stood beside the far more polished woman who glared across the street with enough venom to cut through the tempered glass wall that made the once regal house look like a chunk of a dilapidated strip mall. "It's ghastly, I'll give you that. But it's also none of your business."

"It most certainly is," Mycroft said, pouting. "Look, you can see right into their back yard if you stand at this angle, and there it is. That poor thing. It's locked in that cage outside all day and night, and look, it's too big for it, it can't even stand up properly! No shelter and I never see anyone feed it or give it water." Mycroft's pout turned into a quiver, her blue eyes brimming with glassy tears that she held back with effort. "Never a hint of affection for it, or kindness, it is simply locked up and forgotten. An ornament and nothing more. If that's how someone treats a dog, how awful they must be to their fellow man!"

Grace had borne witness to this unexpected rush of feeling before, and it was always jarring to experience it when Mycroft had been nothing but cold, aloof whimsy in the moments leading up to it. So much of her life was about control, Grace thought, her grip tight upon her environment and those things she filled it with, the measurement of irresponsible wealth put into a balance against the poverty a simple ride on the Underground often revealed. Mycroft Holmes was a warrior on a mission, though she would never admit such a sentiment, and actually laughed when Grace had once brought it up. But Grace knew the truth, even if Mycroft didn't want to face it. Mycroft Holmes wanted to topple kings and queens and put her brand of Robin Hood necessity in its place, even if it was primarily symbolic. She took advantage of their folly and twisted it against them and though idiots like Powell would never understand it, the populace respected the Blue Danube, and thus her, for it.

Grace put a steady hand on Mycroft's sloping shoulder. "You're not responsible for its life, Mycroft, and please, please tell me you aren't going to steal a dog."

Mycroft deeply sniffed, and turned on her heel as she headed for the front door of her house. "That is a Russian borzoi, the prized breed of the courts of Alexander the Great, a dog of such noble lineage that Czars have doted upon them and brought them into the most intimate realms of their castles. They are kind creatures, independent and yet loving companions who offer gentle affection to their handlers. Their souls are matched in their beauty, a rare occurrence even within the animal realm. They have little aggression within them, and to see one treated this way, it's an aberration I truly can't bear!" Her hand trembled as she put her key in the lock, the front door opened after a fumbling attempt. "Really, Grace, I should think you know better than to tell me not to give a damn!"

She tossed her keys into a wooden bowl for the purpose that sat on a ledge by the front door and with her heels still on she marched into the kitchen and began roughly banging pots and pans. Breakfast was now in Mycroft's obsessive grip. Grace caught a glimpse of herself in the flanking full length mirrors that hid twin coat closets and was momentarily startled by her own doubled movement. Somewhat chubby and looking far more boyish than usual in her functional clothes, Grace rubbed her palm over her scalp, the long and short lengths of blonde hair in equally various shades both silky and rough beneath her touch. "I'm taking a shower!" she shouted to Mycroft, who was fully immersed now in her kitchen and refusing to talk to her, too hurt by Grace's flippant attitude towards her latest rescue project.

"You can't steal the dog, Mycroft!" Grace shouted to her as she headed up the curling stairs to the second floor, where the main en suite bathroom with its most opulent shower was situated. "I mean it, that's a bloody purebred and those people will know exactly who it was who took it! Just be patient and when I get into the Yard I'll send a constable around to ask after it. That'll scare them a little, that's usually enough to get them to sell the dog or dump it at a shelter, especially when they get the fine, so don't worry. If it's really bad, I'll get the constable to seize it and then you can adopt it from there, if that's what you really want to do, it's kind of a big dog and I'm not sure it's the kind that can fit in with our busy sort of life. But don't worry about it. It's sorted."

She didn't answer, which wasn't a good sign. Grace sighed and continued her journey up the winding stairs, the opulence of cross eyed lions with muscle ripped manes embracing her into their twisted version of truth.

Thankful for the hot shower and considerably more refreshed and awake half an hour later, a freshly redressed and human feeling Grace sipped at her morning cuppa in blissful appreciation. No eggs, no bacon, no cream, no milk in this house, but the besan flour onion omelette was surprisingly good as were the pumpkin scones and the coffee was high quality and heavily sweetened with organic sugar. Mycroft had opted solely for the coffee, which she drank black, her slender fingers wrapped around a mug she had stolen from Grace's grimy flat, an 'I <3 Muffins' logo printed on it in pink. The lads at the Yard had bought it for Grace as a joke gift at last year's Christmas party and she'd bought them all boxes of extra small condoms, so it was a great laugh all around. That was around the time Chief Wilcox was hinting he wanted to give her an upgrade to DCI--A promotion that was halted due to Powell's fervent protest that Grace was too busy fraternizing with the enemy's castoffs to be properly trusted in the role.

Wilcox was furious, but Grace took the whole fiasco in stride. Let Powell have little tantrums and prove himself the ass he really was. Wilcox wanted to push the promotion through, only for Powell to go over his head to the Chief Officer and outline the amount of cold cases still waiting and how they couldn't waste the homicide budget on a raise with that kind of backlog not to mention time it took to push a working grunt up the ranks and reshuffle responsibilities.

"He put a brick wall up against you and I'm doing what I can to put cracks in it," Wilcox assured her, but Grace told him not to bother. She didn't need money, and titles didn't help her do her job better, in the long run. Let the little prat stew in his own judgemental juices, he was sure to cook himself soon enough.

Powell had tried, of course, to claim that everything in Mycroft's home was stolen, that the Belgravia estate was simply a holding ground for all of the Blue Danube's past illegal acquisitions before he dumped her for a more ornamental woman. That was the theory he clung to, anyway. The actual facts were that nothing in the house didn't have a receipt attached, all the paintings, furnishings, renovations, the house itself, were all obtained legally. The Blue Danube was a jewel thief at the core, and in the strange world of the super rich it was the smallest of items that fetched the highest price. Precious jewels created a shark's frenzy for their illegal purchase among their peers. Though it was still in her clutch purse, Mycroft assured Grace through heavily coded language that the Blue Diamond had already been sold, for twice the amount the Billingsworth coffers had paid and, in a fit of irony, to a business associate of theirs who had always envied their Georgia House and wanted to crack a window in it by owning that which Dear Madame considered a 'tiny nest egg' should world economies collapse.

Thus, Mycroft profited off of the cannibalism of wealth that surrounded the elite, and since no one died and no one was maimed and the only things hurt were egos, Grace allowed the open secret between them slide and had vowed, that first night they'd met in this very house, that she would never reveal who she was to anyone.

"I've got a tough case happening right now," Grace said, finishing up the last of her coffee, which was instantly topped up by Mycroft's attentive pouring from a renewed french press, the dark roast coffee steaming and glorious in its richness. "Manny suspects we might be dealing with the Crown Cartel."

She measured Mycroft's reaction carefully, but there was only a slight wince to her features before that calm, cool mask was slid back into place once again. "I imagine it's quite serious."

"Four bodies, used as suitcases to transport drugs and then abandoned at the Jetty. Not what you'd think, though, they weren't murdered."

Mycroft frowned at this, her cup of coffee held at her lips in question. "How is that managed?"

"Bodies were already dead, of natural causes. Manny figures they were cadavers imported from China, though it's going to be hard to trace them back. I mean, we got nothing on them, they were presented like a family, a mom, a dad, a son and a daughter, but they probably weren't even related. Found them all lined up at the Jetty, like a row of mangled dolls. I just can't wrap my head around what the purpose of that was. It's a real weird business, the bodies wouldn't even hold that much when it comes to transporting drugs, which we did find evidence of on one of the bodies. If the Crown Cartel was looking to flood the streets of London with their brand of deadly smack they used a real inefficient way of transporting it."

Mycroft leaned over the thin kitchen island between them and kissed Grace on the forehead, a quick wipe of her thumb smearing away the coral lipstick imprint of her affection. "Do be careful."

"Powell's going to want my neck. Once he gets wind they were already dead and there's technically no murder he'll be yanking the case out of homicide. But I want my hooks in this one, especially if the Ghost is stirring up spirits again. This was a mistake that was made, I can feel it in my gut, and I'm not giving up my chance to take full advantage of it. The Ghost has made a misstep, I'm going to get him this time."

Mycroft softly sighed and pulled away, not happy with the news that one of the most terrifying cartels that she herself had to deal with was again on Grace's radar. "Sherlock is still getting death threats," she reminded the detective. "They dwindled down to once a month instead of every week, but the grudge is still there. You know how careless my brother is, there is no way you can allow him to have wind of this news."

The front doorbell rang and both Grace and Mycroft frowned over it. With long strides, Mycroft's elegant legs took her across the length of the house to the front door, with Grace remaining on the bar stool, watching from the kitchen island and sipping blandly at the remains of her coffee. The door opened and standing in the frame was a man in his late twenties wearing a rumpled black trench coat that had seen better days, the tattered pockets fraying at his hips and a stray piece of black satin lining hugging around his ankles. The hiking boots he wore were a sharp contrast with the coat, as were the bunched black socks over it, a pair of black jeans with a worn hole in the knee revealing thermal long johns beneath them. Beside this odd creature was a small man of half his stature, with sad brown eyes and an otherwise rather blank expression, his clothes clean though they were comprised of anonymous earth tones and comfortable cottons.

The real testament, however, was the near unbearable waft of skunky weed that encircled both men in an olfactory halo, the stench so strong Grace practically gagged on it from her place far from the front door and in the kitchen. She waved at them both, and the two men waved back.

"Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade, just the person I need to see!" Sherlock exclaimed, the satin lining of his tattered coat trailing behind him as he bounded into the house, hands as elegant as his sister's rubbed together in fervent glee. His best friend, John Watson, slowly followed him in, careful to shut the front door behind him and give Mycroft a shy nod of acknowledgement. She fondly patted his head and silently bid him to go into the kitchen, where she would no doubt feed the poor man since Sherlock had very little clue about caring for himself let alone his helpless flatmate.

Sherlock pulled up one of the kitchen stools and perched on it, sitting far too close to Grace, the waft of residual weed so strong it was giving her a contact high. "Good God, Sherlock, it's not aftershave. If you're going to wake and bake, at least have a shower afterwards!"

Sherlock ignored the dig. "The Crown Cartel is back!" He pulled out a plain brown envelope that Grace had gotten to know quite well for the past five years and tossed it onto the marble kitchen counter. "They've upped the usual threats, which is unusual since they had been merely promising me beatings in the last few notes, but this time they are threatening me with actual morbid harm. They are going to carve up my corpse and serve it to the dogs. That's a quote. Actually, that's all it says, but considering that's the second note I've had this week that says the exact same thing, I'm confident this means they are afraid I'm going to stick my nose into a new enterprise they are starting and will utterly destroy them as I did the last time!"

Grace held firm to her patience. As usual, Sherlock was exaggerating, he hadn't brought the Cartel to its knees at all, in fact it was operating as strong as ever in other parts of the UK, specifically Glasgow, but they'd steered clear of London thanks to Grace's dogged efforts to bring every junkie she happened to run into get into rehab and have their small time runners arrested. With the threat towards dealers who worked with the Cartel getting fast tracked into detox centres along with their clients hanging over them, hiring such street distributors became difficult. Snitching became an ongoing problem, especially when junkies started getting well. In desperation the Crown Cartel started using heavy handed tactics to keep employees, going so far as to kill Sherlock's own dealer as an example, but that also proved to be too much for small time hoods and few wanted to do business with them in London as a result. The shock of the murder of one of their own got dealers talking and it didn't take much effort to bring that branch of the CC down, the main enforcer a mid level gangster who was now serving life for several murders for hire, and who was a strong suspect in the execution of real estate tycoon Ulstead.

Grace opened the letter Sherlock gave her and saw that yes, they were going to feed him to the dogs, as usual. He kept forgetting that this was a common threat, whoever was sending them simply regurgitated the phrases as though they were strips of paper from fortune cookies. Mycroft handed her a Ziploc bag, which she used to place the envelope and note within. She inspected the corner of the note and frowned over it as she always did, she had a good hundred of these in a box in evidence, and each time there was the same handwritten notation in blue ink in the far upper right corner. 'Ghost-11'. She had no idea what it was supposed to signify, but there wasn't a single note that didn't have this personal watermark inked on it.

John Watson, former surgeon, clumsily made his way onto the third and last stool, his hands clasped in front of him on the marble counter. Mycroft tutted at him, and placed a full plate of potato pancakes in front of him, with a side of homemade applesauce. Before he could pick up his fork and tuck in, Mycroft grasped the man's chin in her hand and turned his head from side to side, frowning deeply as she inspected him. "You're dehydrated. Your skin is dry and you have dark circles under your eyes. Sherlock, you are not taking good care of John. The poor man is wasting away, he can't live off tea and the occasional biscuit like you do." She poured John a large tumbler of orange juice and bid him to drink it along with his coffee. John's smile beamed at her as though she were an angel.

"As if!" Sherlock railed at her, insulted. "I'll have you know I took him round the pub last night for pints and chips!"

The Feeding And Care Of John Watson was a common nag between Mycroft and her brother, and it didn't take an especially astute person to understand that John was a tad, to be polite, *off*, a fact accentuated by the odd dent in the side of his head. Rumour was this was the entry point from shellfire that left the rest of the inside of his skull rattling with shrapnel. Of course, it was difficult to tell if it was actual brain damage he suffered or if he was in a constant state of greenout thanks to living with Sherlock and partaking of the skunky herbal remedy on the hour. What Grace did know was that John could no longer practise medicine, was on disability as well as an army pension, did pay his bills on time, somehow managed to remain clean and tidy despite living with the tornado mess of his flatmate, and was a passive, non-verbal little man of fifty-two years who was Sherlock's best friend and who was absolutely besotted with Mycroft.

"This is why you need to come here every morning, you are a mess of selfish whims and checked out childishness, you can't be relied upon! As for this business with the Crown Cartel, you are to stay out of it, your meddling always does more harm than good!"

"I'm not 'meddling'," Sherlock whined. "I'll have you know that there are many people knocking down our door specifically seeking my consulting services, and in fact we had two whole hits on our latest Craigslist ad since last night, so put a sock in it! Business is booming!" Sherlock wobbled in his stool and caught himself from falling at the last second by clutching the edge of the counter. He was a gangly, hyper mess of a man, with long, stringy dark hair that hung to his shoulders and feral green eyes that were set too close together. He shared the same physique as his lithe sister, though on Sherlock it was a jumbled arrangement, long limbs that didn't quite know where to put themselves. The pattern repeated itself outside of Sherlock and into his associates and environment. The fact Sherlock was nearly half John's age and John half Sherlock's height was an odd attempt by the universe at congruity. The differences in their cognitive ability was another such example. Yes, Sherlock was a bloody genius. On paper. IQ 190 or some such rot, according to the testing. Rubbish, the lot of it. Any practical use of his brain was blown away in puffs of ganja and wasted on 'cases' he took on that inevitably involved the romantic infidelities of the local residents at his Baker Street slum.

"Speaking of nasty notes, have you paid your rent this month?" Mycroft busied herself putting together a small stack of sandwiches, along with a juice box, carrot sticks and a baggie of grapes. She put them in a tin lunchbox with a Star Wars pattern stamped on it. Yoda believed in the force of veggies. "I'm getting tired of Mrs. Hudson sending me your eviction notices every time you're five minutes late with the rent. I told you to get receipts from that miserable woman and you've been lax in that regard. I can't force her to get the cupboards in your flat fixed if she claims you haven't paid for the month when you most certainly did."  
  
"Everything is fine," Sherlock huffed. He crossed his arms and pouted over his coffee, which he hadn't touched. "I paid her yesterday."

"A week late. Wonderful."

"Oh shut it! I paid her, didn't I?"

John shakily reached for the salt shaker on the counter and nearly shook a whole teaspoon of it into his coffee. Mycroft stopped him and switched it out for her crystal sugar bowl before it was too late. "Stop arguing with me, you're upsetting John."

Sherlock sulked, and he took out his stash from one of the bulging pockets in his trench coat, which had far too many buckles on it, none of them seeming to serve any real purpose. He plucked out an expertly rolled roach with nimble fingers and played with the ends, making sure they were twisted just a little bit tighter. He rolled his eyes at his sister's long suffering sigh. "I'm not lighting it up in here, I'm going on the back porch like I always do. Lord Roland had better not be there, I get real sick of being forced to puff, puff pass with him, he never reciprocates. Why is his back porch so close to yours, anyway? It's like he built it that way on purpose, just so he could steal my rolled gold."

"You're not going anywhere until John finishes his pancakes," Mycroft stated.

Grace felt her mobile buzz in her jacket pocket and she took it out, pressing the pink Motorola to her ear. "Yeah, Manny, what have you got for me?"

"You're going to love this!" Manny said, her voice filled to the brim with Florida sunshine. "Tox screens came back, we got a match with the Crown Cartel brand of heroin. Also, found a number to go with a possible cadaver factory that's in use in mainland China, apparently they had a raid there not long ago by local authorities. Luckily, the officer involved speaks perfect English and he's dying to have a chat with you. Sorry, pun intended." Manny paused, and Grace knew she was carefully listening in, catching the higher tones of Sherlock's continued protests about moving out of his decrepit Baker Street flat. "The kids are still there?"

"Yeah, I'm at Crofty's. She wouldn't let me go to the Yard without our family breakfast."

"That is so cute. Is little Johnnie there?"

"Yes, and being plied with orange juice because he had a few too many pints with Sherlock last night. Oi, John!"

John glanced up mid chew, his last potato pancake nearly gone.

"Manny says hello."

John nodded, and silently finished the rest of his meal.

Grace turned her attention back to her cell. "He says hello back and he's wondering if you'll go by the flat some time and have a snog."

"He's like a little puppy made of cotton balls," Manny replied, not at all getting Grace's sarcasm. "I just want to squish him up and put him in my pocket!"

Grace chuckled at this, because with the way John was staring at Mycroft, with those big brown eyes like she was the very centre of his universe, well, Manny's imagery wasn't far off. "He's mooning again, right in front of me."

"Jealous?"

"Envious. John gets his lunch made for him every day and I have to scrounge for change for the snack canteen by my office."

"Sounds like you've been officially ousted."

"Since the adoption, actually, when Mycroft insisted he be taken out of Pound Sherlock and get a long walk outside every morning. He really is a rescued hound, you know." Grace took her last gulp of coffee. "Chat with you later. Thanks for the heads up, Manny."

"No trouble. And give little Johnnie a scritch under his chin from me!"

Grace hung up and tucked her mobile back into her pocket. Mycroft closed up the tin Star Wars lunchbox and pushed it, and a thermos of tea, at John. "There's your lunch, BBQ tempeh sandwiches, alfalfa sprouts and hummus, just like you like, and a nice big thermos of chamomile tea with locally farmed organic honey to keep your tummy happy. Tell Sherlock he has to play nice today, I don't want to have any more trouble with that foul landlady of his, the less I have to talk to her the better."

The back screen door opened and Sherlock popped his head back into the kitchen. "By the way, Mother called. She wants a visit."

To think the day had started so well.

Grace braced herself against the sudden ill mood that descended upon the opulent house, its oppressive might making her stomach tie in knots. Even John curled into himself in his seat, his arms wrapped tight around his stomach, as though pained by the very thought of Mrs. Valerie Holmes. Grace appreciated his unspoken empathy.

Mycroft stood ramrod straight, all softness eradicated, her cold Iron Lady persona at the fore as she regarded her brother's raised brows.

"What the hell does that bitch want now?"

If a home could be made of frozen tundra, the Belgravia estate was now a bloody Arctic iceberg.

"She just said she wants us to visit."

"It's never that simple."

Mycroft cast Grace a knowing look, and Grace grimaced in reply, not sure how to answer her. Valerie Holmes was a challenging person, and that was the kindest way to put it, the elderly Dowager Duchess running on the last fumes of her royal title without a true penny to her name. But the pompous attitude never left her, and she always greeted Grace with an up and down inspection that left her feeling like she'd been stripped naked and tossed out for dog scraps, a scrutiny that would inevitably cause conflict with Mycroft who knew exactly the game of class her mother was playing. Even the suggestion of a visit with that awful woman was torture, and Grace shuddered at the memory of dusty, cobweb strewn antiques, the slightly yeasty smell in the air of the country cottage and the heavy glint of costume jewellery that went out of style in 1962.

"She wants money," Mycroft snapped. She tore the empty plates from the table and tossed them with excessive force into the sink behind her, heedless of chipping the edges.

"You don't have to give it to her," Grace reminded her. "She gets a monthly allowance from your late father's estate that more than covers her basic needs, it's her own fault if she mismanages it."

"She's probably been at the track." Mycroft glared at her brother, who slunk back into the house, the roach in his hand unlit. "Did she say how much debt she's in this time?"

Sherlock shrugged, said nothing.

"So she did tell you," Mycroft pressed.

"Not much for a change. Just ten thousand," Sherlock muttered. He sheepishly gave his sister an apologetic look. "Are you going to tell her I told you?"

"She wants the damn money, of course she'll know you told me. You know the game she plays. She wants us to visit so she can hang you for you betraying her so called trust, and then she'll tear into a long soliloquy where she judges me for my unflattering hairstyle, my way of dressing, my lack of man, my poor choice in friends, my 'overtly bohemian life', and then as a final dessert, she'll demand the money from me for making her suffer so, for we are both horrible children and she has no idea whatsoever where she went wrong."

Grace took Mycroft's white knuckled hand in hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "You don't have to go."

Mycroft closed her eyes, the stress in her face refusing to abate even when she pulled Grace's wrist up to her lips and gently kissed the pale, soft flesh, leaving an imprint of her coral mouth upon it. She released Grace's hand and deeply sighed, centring herself as she slid her palms down the hips of her grey, pinstriped pencil wool skirt. She blinked her eyes open and it was John who was in her line of sight first, his wide eyes staring at her in a mixture of expectation and worry. She playfully ruffled his hair, leaving it in messy spikes.

"Go and have fun with Sherlock. We'll see you in the morning."

John slunk off of his chair, the lunch box clutched close to his chest, his actions like a toddler being sent to school when what he really wanted was to hang back and stay safe in the realm of home and Mummy. Sherlock followed after him, his expression pained.

"I'm really sorry, Mycroft."

"It's not your fault, Sherlock, you know this. Do you know who she's in debt to? I can wire them the money. I suggest you don't answer the phone for a few days so she can't berate you for 'telling'." She followed her brother and John to the front door, waving them off as they slunk out to have whatever odd adventures those two got up to during the day--Neither of them were actually employed and it was hard to say what they filled the many hours with, though Sherlock always had a story to tell, usually about the foibles of his odd Baker Street neighbours. Mycroft stood at the front window, watching them leave before her attention was once again brought to the plight of the unfortunate borzoi across the street, its sad caging so very much a metaphor for the one her own mother tried to trap her in.

Grace moved behind her and slid her arms around her waist, holding her close. Mycroft's heart was racing, a leftover of adrenaline from the shock of having to deal with her mother's latest gambling debt, a small one but destined to spiral into much more should she not be careful where exactly the payment went. Simply putting it in her mother's bank account meant it would be spent before an hour was out, and not to pay an outstanding bill. Grace kissed the steady pulse at her neck, liking the way Mycroft melted against her.  
  
"Don't steal the dog," Grace reminded her.

  



	4. receipts and rent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace gets an international tip and Mycroft has a typical day having it out with the landlady.

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter four

The surprising quiet of the Yard was a gift Grace appreciated and she, like the other detectives in homicide division, kept her mouth shut about it lest the peace be jinxed. She had half a dozen cold case files on her desk that she'd decided to give a casual peruse between runs for coffee, and as she hadn't heard back from her contact in China, the cases were a welcome distraction. Days in the Yard were often like this, hours of protracted inaction and slugging through paperwork and then the sudden rush of activity spurred on by murder, and then weeks to months of hardcore overtime, some of it on her own dime, taking up the bulk of her life. Manny told her she should be so lucky, in Florida homicide detectives practically had a murder a day and only the most obvious cases had a chance of getting solved. She was spoiled here in London where gunfire didn't ring across the Thames every day. But while that was true, the cases she did tend to get were weirder. She'd caught a break this time with the victims being already dead of natural causes so the urge to rush to a conclusion wasn't as severe as it normally would have been. The Drug Squad had been notified of the Crown Cartel's involvement, and the lead investigator on that team had promised Grace he'd give her any information they gleaned.

There was hardly a whisper in homicide, and Grace looked up from her desk to give the usually busy section of the Yard a sweeping study. Fellow detectives were hunched over in their seats, some talking sotto voiced into phones as they conferred with colleagues and witnesses, papers and folders strewn on the surfaces of several desks along with paper coffee cups full of milky brown brew. The place had the tense expectation one feels when hospital emergency rooms are too quiet, the looming threat of a sudden disaster and rush of life and death keeping everyone just that little bit on edge. With the Crown Cartel in the mix, it was only a matter of time before the bodies started piling up, overdoses crowding Manny's morgue and interfering with her tanning schedule.

A fresh cup of coffee was dangled in front of Grace's nose, and she took it without question. "I hate the way the quiet makes me so antsy. I've been looking over this six year old murder file for the past two hours trying to glean something new out of it but all I've got is a dead Jane Doe prozzie with her hands lopped off. Crown Cartel, for certain, it's their particular calling card, but I can't see how this poor girl fit in. There's rumours she was dealing drugs as a side business, probably more lucrative for her, she was hardly a looker. They were putting the thumbs on dealers who weren't turning over prescribed profits, so that's got to be the main reason this was done. But it's weird. She wasn't murdered, there's a witness that says she was there when she took the heroin. Went by the name of Moonflower, but nobody knows her real identity, other than the fact she was maybe Ukrainian. No one who knew her is even sure of that." Grace took a deep sip of fresh coffee and then placed it down with a wince. "I'm wired up on this shit today. I can feel my nerves jiggle."

Chief Super Wilcox sat on the edge of her desk, his arms crossed as he gave the cold case she was perusing a stolen glance. He was a short man, ginger haired and red faced with dark freckles splashed across wrinkled cheeks. He'd been taking blood pressure medication for the past three years but it didn't seem to be doing him much good. He had an angioplasty done on an arterial vein back in May. His wife had been begging him to retire before he left his office in a box.

"Powell is sniffing. I just thought you'd like to know." He glanced around the place, happy to see his department was taking full advantage of the slow day to do those things that homicide did best, namely attempt to solve murders. "I know this corpse luggage business has ties with the Crown Cartel and it's whet your appetite, but it's not a homicide and the little rat is twitching about it already. I can only protect you so far, you know, and Powell has an in with those upper crust types, they like a good showman and you know how much he loves the BBC and they him."

"The BBC loved Jimmy Savile," Grace said. She laid out the photographs of the dead prostitute in a long line across the surface of her desk. "I appreciate the heads up, though, I do."

"This wouldn't be a problem if you'd let me fight for your promotion to DCI."

"What can I say? I love the grunt work more than the pen and paper, the title would only get in my way." She frowned over the pictures, the purplish bruises that covered the body indicating decay and not abuse. "You know, this Jane Doe wasn't a regular user, there's no old track marks. If she was dealing for the Crown Cartel she must have known the smack was tainted, why would she use it?"

Grace opened up the coroner's report on the murdered prostitute, taking careful note of how the hands were removed. It was an attempt to prevent identification, but it was a sloppy method considering the murderer left her head attached. There was a good chance it was the Russian murderer for hire who had taken out Sherlock's weed dealer all those years ago, and there was something about the way the body was handled that had similarities with the human luggage they found at the Jetty. Though it was originally believed to be a homicide, the prostitute had ended up being yet another victim of the Crown Cartel's bad heroin and had died of an overdose. The hand lopping had been done post mortem.

As if that wasn't undignified enough, inspection of the body revealed a strange code written on the heel of the victim in black magic marker. 'GHOST-08'.

"Sherlock Holmes popped around here yesterday, sniffing around the Drug Squad officers and brandishing yet another nasty note from his favourite admirers. I know Miss Holmes is your 'good friend', but it would be wise to talk to her about her brother. We can't have him stomping in here, stinking of THC and railing in paranoia about empty death threats that have dwindled into nothing more than a joke as the years have passed and he's still alive and still as much of a loser skunk as he's always been. Does that lad not know how to find a job? Our tax dollars not at work. As for his love letters from the Cartel, the notes are obviously written by low level dealers, specifically the one he owes money to, all done as a way to force him to pay debts. They might not even be written by the Cartel at all."

Grace mulled this over, but didn't think that was likely. The code 'Ghost-11' inked in blue in the far right corner of every note suggested there was a rather intense sense of order in it, and if anyone else did try to steal that kind of threatening thunder from the Cartel they were probably going to end up like the victim in her cold case's crime scene photos. Dead and hands off.

"I've warned him before not to come here," Grace said.

"He's just lucky Powell was at a conference in Manchester and couldn't turn him out on his ear like he does, with pasted on charges besides. He still hasn't paid that parking fine from when he propped his bicycle near the front steps and Powell forced on a ticket. He has to tread careful, he's causing no end of trouble for his sister with his weird little theories spewed in a slurred haze at whatever officer or clerk he manages to snag the attention of. You know that Powell wants to harass your girl, and he's not above using her brother to do it. We can't have him waltzing in here with his crazy stories, with that little hangdog man who's tottering after him like a satellite. If he needs to rant so badly tell him to go to the Met, they know better how to deal with him."

"I've told him, and Mycroft has told him, but he's miraculously forgetful for a Mensa champ." Grace gave him a helpless shrug. "I'll talk to him again."

"Hm. Please do. Powell does love to get his nails into Miss Holmes by using her brother as a conduit. He'll start his picking and refuse to stop no matter how far it teeters into harassment. I've put out a standing order that he's not to be within ten feet of her, if that helps."

"It does, actually," Grace said.

Chief Super Wilcox slipped off the end of the desk, his thick hand giving her shoulder a tight squeeze. "Let me know how far you progress in your luggage case. There's multiple departments interested in it, and I like to keep the threads of communication between them open."

"I will. And thanks."

"Good lad."

Wilcox left Grace to her work and she had to wonder how it was she could have such a kind mentor in a job where dealing with violence and brutality was the norm. Wilcox was often more counsellor than figurehead, his door always propped open and his soft spoken voice a balm against the chaos of bloodshed that surrounded her division. She worried that he was finally seriously considering retirement, his health problems worsening as the years went on. Powell mistook Wilcox's gentle nature for weakness, but it was the physical that was doing the good man in, his soul as rock solid as ever while his actual beating heart began to clog and wheeze.

Her phone rang and she picked it up. "Lestrade, homicide."

"Is this the detective? Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade?"

The line crackled and Grace realized she had been connected through a vast distance, that this was the officer from the mainland in China she had been trying to contact all morning. "That's me. What can I do for you?"

"I am LiPing Xao, an officer of the Ministry of Public Security, working in the city of Dalian, in Liaoning. I hear you have some unexpected deliveries in London and I wanted to talk to you about that."

Xao had the voice of a grizzled female cop and Grace related to her immediately. "Chat away. We've got four bodies that are partially embalmed and since we can't find any information on them and yet they seem to have died of natural causes, we're thinking stolen corpses."

"Your coroner said she believes they are Chinese?"

"More than likely, they were identified through their clothing and the few possessions they had, all of which are popular there but not here. All labels were in Mandarin and detailed tox screens indicated scant bacterial flora that's only found in your water supply."

"You know this from water?"

"Our coroner keeps a large database of water microbes from around the world. The ones she found in the bodies are definitely from Liaodong Peninsula."

There was a huff of understanding on the other end of the line, and some sharp words barked in what Grace assumed was Mandarin but could just as easily have been another dialect. The Mainland mostly spoke Cantonese, according to Manny, with each region possessing its own version of it. A lot like the UK, really, with its wide varieties of words and inflections that changed from one region to another, and even from one city to the next.

"I can guarantee they are from one of the two Dalian cadaver factories and most likely from the one I investigated a few weeks ago. There a few more, but they are not up to the same standard, and from what I heard from your coroner these bodies were mostly intact. They also did not use the plastination process for preserving, which is very unusual, but it could indicate a custom order. Currently, there are strict regulations in place as to the use of the bodies and their transfer of ownership. On paper. But like anything, the system is prone to corruption and if someone is handed a lot of money to buy bodies, there would not be many questions. We cracked down on this not long ago, it is a disgraceful practise and against the law. The people responsible are now in prison and we hope they will be dealt with harshly but the truth is they will probably only suffer a large fine. I am not happy about that. It is a crime to disrespect the dead."

"The bodies we got included two kids," Grace said. "A boy of about eight years old and a little girl of about six. Because of the pristine condition of their bodies Manny thought maybe they had died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but the formaldehyde treatment took away any of those signifying markers in the cells so she can't be sure. She was lucky as hell to have found the bacterial flora in the emptied gut. How would a kid's body end up in the cadaver factory?"

"It is strange," Officer Xao told her. "The rumours are that the bodies at the Dalian factory come from the prisons and from unclaimed dead, though there are a few donations. Bodies given for organ donor donation sometimes end up there if there is a surplus or if the organs can't be used. I'm afraid there is no way to know for certain how the cadavers died since those records are not kept, nor are there any names or family attached. Once the bodies are given over, they remain anonymous, it is thought this is more respectful to the families and to the bodies as well, which are now simply vessels for science and nothing more. That is the idea, but of course, there is ample room for its abuse. An anonymous body can still be a missing person, we'll never know for sure." Xao let out a grim cough. "Donations are understandably slim. No one wants to think it is their uncle or father fleshless and posed on a horse that is equally stripped of skin."

"So we have bodies that will never have names." Grace mulled this over. "What are we supposed to do with them?"

"They have already had funerals, Detective Inspector, if they were lucky enough to have actually been donated. At this point, finding out who they are would do more harm than good to the families left behind. Better to simply cremate them."

It was a simple solution but that didn't mean it sat well with Grace, who felt a small ceremony of some type had to happen, if only as an apology towards the worldly vessels these souls occupied. "Is there any way we can determine they came from the cadaver factory for sure? You said they were getting sold illegally by a cadaver factory insider, but I'm guessing the bodies are pretty regulated for the factory's own buying and selling and someone would notice a few missing off the shelf. The inventory would be off, am I right?"

"They are numbered and receipts have been issued but the processing is not so guarded. Where the bodies come from is still in question, and though they claim to take none from the prison system or unidentified bodies found on the streets, I can't guarantee this is true. Plastination of human cadavers has become lucrative business and the factories in Dalian are booming. Employees make two hundred American dollars a month working on the dead," Officer Xao shouted at someone behind her in forceful Mandarin, the phone momentarily muffled. When she returned she sounded angry, though not at Grace. "We found a box of receipts during the last raid, and it's a long shot but we might be able to get you what you need. You may have some luck there, the cadaver factory is not anonymous for the living. We did find several receipts and payments made using credit cards and if there are any that match the purchases made for what you found they will be investigated. I will fax you that information and please, tell me if it was of use to you." Grace could practically feel Officer Xao's shudder. "It is a strange place, the cadaver factory, people hung in plastic on hooks, like some kind of horror movie. I know in my mind it is supposedly for the uses of science and these are no longer living people, but it is an unsettling image. For the bodies to be abused in the way you have told me, it angers me. These were people, once, and I can't guarantee they came from 'donations' as many of the museums here and abroad suggest. Good luck, Detective Inspector Grace."

Grace said goodbye and hung up the phone, thinking that she really liked Officer LiPing Xao, her clipped tones and near military humourlessness a sign of deep professionalism that Grace herself struggled to possess at times. They were of one mind when it came to the disrespect offered the dead in Manny's morgue. She was glad it was someone like Xao who cracked down on the buying and selling of human meat.

She pulled out her cell and gave Manny a call, catching her on her lunch break. "Tell me you found something interesting. I just got off the phone with the acting Officer, LiPing Xao, who told me about the crackdown on illegal corpse peddling at a cadaver factory in Dalian. I still can't wrap my head around that being a thing, I mean, resurrectionists went out of style in the early 1800's around here. She said the cadaver factories keep an inventory of the bodies and all the shelves they're on, at least at the ones at the current Dalian facility are carefully accounted for. I have to believe they got a serial number printed on them somewhere."

"I found a serial number all right," Manny said around a sandwich, and Grace hoped the woman wasn't munching down on a ham and mayo with a corpse opened up behind her. The likelihood of this being the case made Grace's ick factor itch. "You're going to love it. I want a big fat Christmas present this year, because damn if I haven't delivered a Crown Cartel holy grail right smack into your lap. Hold on, I'm sending you a pic."

Grace pulled her cell away from her ear and opened her messenger program, Manny's picture already loading. When it came into pixilated clarity Grace damned near dropped the phone. She pressed it tight against her ear, casting a wide, nervous glance around the rows of desks, hoping that Powell wasn't going to make a sudden appearance. She was not going to let this case out of her hands, not even if they plastinated their cold, dead tendons.

"That says what I think it does, right?"

"Inside the lower lip, like a tattoo, done post-mortem and in the exact same spot on all four bodies. GHOST-O8. They might as well have them stamped with Property Of The Crown Cartel. What are you thinking? Are they into the buying and selling of cadavers now, that's their angle? I can tell you they're useless for importing heroin, I could only find trace amounts in the body cavity and they are pretty small corpses. I don't understand the purpose in using them, but the Crown Cartel obsessively labelled them like they do with everything else. If we crack that code we'll get our answer."

'GHOST-11' for Sherlock's threats, 'GHOST-08' for abandoned corpses. Grace pressed her fingers to her temple wondering what madness had infected the Cartel to be so fiendishly organized in its system that it gave itself away, and yet was confident it wouldn't be found out. "I'm waiting on receipts from Officer Xao."

Manny snorted. "They wouldn't be that stupid to leave names and numbers would they? Home addresses to corpse molesters? Sure would help us some."

Grace shrugged. "I dunno. Whoever did this was sloppy enough to lose their luggage, so who knows? I'm getting a fax in from Xao now, I'll chat with you later, Manny."

"I'll be here, manhandling the dead as per usual. But I won't be propping any of them up for permanent memento mortis, that's a tad too much even for me."

"Noted."

Grace said her goodbyes and promised Manny that yes, she would be invited to come over for dinner this week, maybe on Wednesday? Mycroft was perfecting her seitan ribs and failing that there was the standard mushroom Wellington that had Manny drooling through the phone. "She missed her calling, she should never have been a pirate, she should have been a chef. I've never known anyone to wrangle flavour out of vegetables like she can!"

"I dunno, bossy, perfectionist, obsessive, runs everyone else's lives for them when she gets a chance--just one look Sherlock tells you she's the one footing the bill on him, and John for that matter. She's a chef without the hat. She's got all of us cooked in her friends bourguignon."

Manny chortled. "I can't wait for Wednesday. Are the kids going to be there?"

"Anything for a proper meal, of course they will be."

"It's going to be the happiest hump day, ever! I can't wait!"

Grace was lucky to have a friend who was so easy to please. It was difficult to find people who understood the limits on her time, even on slow days like this one. Every minute had to be measured out in droplets of blood and the weird tattoos of words and numbers on the lips of corpses. Grace didn't take many holidays, and the hours were always too long and at the end of these long days of murder, violence and the shit storm that is humanity she crept into bed too exhausted to breathe let alone chat with Mycroft who softly snored, her head on the pillow next to her own. But she always made a point to reach for her, the pleasant warmth of Mycroft's lean body fitting nicely against the softer curves of her own. Sometimes, that was all the communication that was needed.

Still, a trip to Greece would be nice. Mycroft was hinting again, cooking things like vegan moussaka and using excessive amounts of lemon, oregano, olive oil and garlic in her latest meals. She left brochures about the Acropolis lying around. She bought a book on Lesbos and left it in the front foyer, near the wooden bowl for the house keys. She kept complaining she was pale, hinting she needed a tan and only white sands and bleached stone villas would do.

But a vacation was a long way off with Grace's current workload, which left her chasing after ink even in her sleep, dreams of signing papers and writing reports making her feel like she never got a break and worked forty-eight hours straight.

The fax machine squatting near the entrance to their department screeched into life, and Grace left her desk to see if Officer Xao had something special for her. Receipts all right, four in all and painfully devoid of information about the cadavers, but remarkably detailed about the buyer, including initials and an account number. Running the information through her systems would dredge up a name and from there it would be easy to see if he'd been incarcerated on UK soil before, and barring that a quick swipe through Interpol to see if he might be there as well. She shook the freshly inked papers as she brought them, warm and kept separate so they didn't smudge, to her desk. She glanced at them.

She stopped in mid step and stood frozen in the middle of homicide, a sea of brown desks surrounding her like rectangular dunes.

Printed in neat ball point pen, on the bottom of every receipt, was the Crown Cartel code, GHOST-08.

Jesus H., what the hell was going on?

The faxed receipts clutched tight in her grip, Grace marched out of homicide division and made for the elevator, up to the third floor where records could give her an identity on this bastard. Going in person always fast-tracked the process and she had good friends up there who were eager to peek into bank accounts, their security clearance wiping away all sense of public privacy. She hit the button in the elevator with the pad of her thumb twice and willed the doors to shut quickly.

She caught a glimpse of Powell charging down the hall in front of the lift, his weasel face pinched and angry as he headed into the land of desks and tired detective inspectors. She realized she'd left her cold case files on her desk, unsecured. The bloody bastard would have her head for it. He didn't care about the long ago dead, or prostitutes with mysterious matching codes written on them that somehow found a link with purchased corpses from China. As far as Powell was concerned cold cases were a waste of time, there was a limit on how deeply a person could investigate a single crime. He was wrong, and with that attitude he was barely a beat cop, but he looked good in front of cameras and he acted like he knew what he was doing. Higher ups loved a good ass kicker who knew how to manipulate the media.

The doors to the elevator closed on Powell who Grace saw was puttering close to her desk. Rotten little worm.

The elevator stopped on the third floor and she tumbled out of it. She rolled the faxed receipts into tight cylinders as she marched into the records department, heading straight for her buddy Marcus, who was hunched over a computer keyboard, a DOS terminal box opened on the screen. He glanced at her in question over the lip of the monitor and Grace shook the faxed papers at him. "I need info on this account. Names, addresses, his shoe size, the lot. And I need it fast tracked, as in, do it now."

Marcus twirled a Pokeman pen in his grip. "What's in it for me?"

"Tickets to the Foo Fighters concert."

"Floors."

"I'm not a miracle worker, but I'm enough of one to get you tickets, so cough up."

Marcus tossed his pen onto his desk and Grace handed him the faxed receipts. It didn't take him long to get a name and then a hit on they guy in the system, the burly man a former Russian heavy by the name of Boris Stanislov. Marcus left his seat and let Grace take over the computer, the Pokeman pen going to quick scribbling use as she wrote the information down on the back of the faxed papers. "This guy has priors for soliciting women for the purposes of prostitution. He's a pimp, works with some former model named Anastasia Yuri. No drug charges though, it's all the skin trade with these two." A picture of Anastasia came up on the screen and Grace got a good look at her emaciated face and greying hair. She was the type who wore too much make-up and made herself up like a Madame puppet. Boris was fairly anonymous, bald head, bulky body, a scar along his left cheek. The whole cliched package. Grace sat back in Marcus's chair and sighed.

"I wonder which one of these assholes actually went to China to get those bodies? It's on Boris's dime, apparently, but my money's on her." Grace picked up Marcus's Pokeman pen and ran its yellow tip along her bottom lip in thought. "No info on where they're living now?"

Marcus pointed at the last known address for Boris. "That's the address to the London Library. I doubt he's got a cot there. This guy doesn't look like he has that much love for the printed word."

Boris had tiny, dull eyes and a skull shaped like an eggplant. He had one distinguishing tattoo that said Anny with a heart surrounding it. Annie, spelled wrong. The guy was no bloody genius. His specialty in the sex trade, however, was disturbing since the Crown Cartel had only ever dealt in drugs before and maybe with this creep in the mix they were hoping to expand their operations into prostitution. Boris had a long list of assault and rape charges, a real bad piece of shit all around, and combining that with his brute stupidity Grace had to wonder what the Cartel was playing at.

Marcus took his Pokeman pen back before she could chew it. "That Constable you sent around your neighbour's house popped by earlier, said you were busy with the Chief Super and he didn't want disturb you. He had to come up and hand in his report since his panda's computer is down. Said he went by and there wasn't any dog, the lady of the house was still in her bathrobe and the only signs of neglect was the state of the house. It's having major renos, he said." Marcus shrugged his shoulders forward. "The woman was flat out surprised someone thought she had a dog, kind of weird if you ask me. The person complaining must have got the wrong neighbour. You'd think she'd know, though, I mean, that kind of neighbourhood--Belgravia--that's the big bucks royals fucks, you know what I'm saying? I'd think the people there would have a real sharp eye on everything everyone else is doing, goes with the territory."

Grace tried not to let her simmering fury show, because oh yes, she knew *exactly* who that neighbour who 'didn't have a dog' was, and Grace was going to be giving her one hell of a piece of her mind in a minute. Seriously, she'd broken into the neighbour's house! And no dog could only mean one thing...It was now sitting pretty in Mycroft's living room being plied with fancy treats and precious affection.

That infuriating woman!

"Thanks for this," Grace said, printing up the information on Boris and his girlfriend/accomplice Anastasia. "Not sure where to find them here in London, but I'll put the word out that they are people of interest. You're a peach."

"Floors," Marcus repeated.

"How about nosebleeds if you keep up your whinging." She thwacked him playfully on the back of the head with the rolled up papers in her grip. "'Ta, Marcus."

Going back to her desk with Powell sniffing around wasn't a good idea, so she ducked back down the back stairs and headed down what felt like dozens of flights until she found herself in the basement where the Yard canteen was hidden. She wasn't especially hungry or thirsty, but a blueberry muffin wrapped in plastic was tempting enough. She handed over what scant change she had in her pocket and slid into a far corner where she could keep an eye on who came into the large room. So far, she was alone.

She picked up her mobile and dialled home. Mycroft answered it, yawning.

"You broke into the bloody's neighbour's house," Grace said. "I take it we now have a dog?"

A sharp bark in the background was the reply.

~*~

Mycroft Holmes is a careful woman and which means she does not go anywhere without being fully aware of her environment, she does not participate in flippant conversation without analyzing it syllable by syllable, she does not dress casually and instead picks each piece even when going to bed as though it is a costume reflecting mood, she does not simply choose a bank on a whim and use it to satisfy the returns on her massive, stolen wealth. London Holding was a bank she had decided on because not only did they have excellent interest rates, they also didn't ask a lot of questions and in the past had refused to release client accounts, citing new international privacy laws. That many of their more prestigious clients were criminals was a given, but there were plenty of old money bastards filling up their coffers here as well, the mixture a telling metaphor on the nature of money itself.

Still, this did not make the meeting she was having with the bank manager any easier, and while he courted her with his spiel for more advanced hedge fund investment opportunities and the need for a line of credit, Mycroft stopped him short with a wave of her hand and said, "I need to transfer ten thousand pounds into the account of a weasel bookie named Clint Garrison. I have the information here."

She handed him the small slip of paper that had Garrison's contact information on it, the bank manager's expression slipping away from its usual eager, open communication to one that was darkened and sad. "Oh my. I take it this is the same trouble?"

Of course it was the same trouble, she wanted to shout at him, the stupid old witch couldn't halt her impulses or her ego long enough to understand she would lose her crappy little cottage house and all of its dust strewn antiques. This was just the tip of it, Mycroft was sure, for her mother never made small bets and this little shred of whim was a precursor to the more ghastly bills that were yet to come. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, that was her usual trademark.

At least the diamond ring was out of her hands and Mycroft could breathe easy that it would buffer the expenses her mother's excessive need to gamble would create. The payment had gone through thanks to the help of a curator Mycroft had carefully chosen and hired for the purpose, his job on her payroll listing as nothing more on the books than 'accountant'. She had never met him. He worked daily at a small art gallery that she had created herself and he was the conduit for purchases of her stolen jewels, which were surrendered to him by a happy, clueless John Watson who dutifully dropped off boxes at the gallery as a sort of part time job. When there was a special delivery, as the blue diamond ring certainly was, the jewellery was delivered in a black box, signifying its value and that it had a purchaser who would be in contact. It was a system that worked quite well, the curator was paid very handsomely for his quiet work and John was completely in the dark as to what he was delivering, as was the curator, who never opened the black boxes. The only people who understood what was being exchanged for certain was the mysterious Blue Danube and the eager rich and powerful buyer, neither of whom would ever meet. If identities were discovered, it was the solely on the part of the buyer, in this case an associate of Billingsworth who couldn't stop himself from bragging about his acquisition. "The old boy was going to give it to his daughter as a gift, but Dear Madame wouldn't hear of it, saying she wasn't giving her slag daughter a thing. Cruel, I say, a mother shouldn't be so judgemental against her own children. Well, she won't have anything to deny her now, will she? Power without her to the new couple, I say."

That the man was clearly the groom Kevin's father was not a concern for Mycroft, who had deleted his text exchange the minute she received it. Instructions had been given and the whole matter had been settled within the hour. The bank manager had assured her that yes, indeed, the money had been transferred over into her account and did she want to invest any of it, and of course the answer was no. Let it sit stagnant and pointless where it would be used to pay her mother's constant debts and Sherlock's rent and possibly for the purchase of the foul house next door so she could get rid of her awful neighbours and walk their beautiful stolen borzoi down the street in peace.

She left the bank, smoothing down her grey pencil skirt before shaking the hand of the sweaty bank manager who fawned over her with gracious annoyance at her lack of detailed portfolio. Her heels echoed as they stepped across the marble flooring, her gait as confident as a deer padding through the deep woods and finding relief in a clearing, namely the parking lot, where her BMW and John and Sherlock were busy in the back seat taking tokes and commiserating on their latest 'case'. She was lucky she'd kept the top down and the residual skunk of the herb drifted out into the spring air, putting an acidic overlay on the invading car exhaust from the main road.

"It's fairly obvious she's sleeping with the mailman," Sherlock said to John, his head comfortable on the back cushion of his seat, long plumes of smoke leaving his thin lips and carried off by the air above him. "One need only look at the shape of the newborn's nose to determine whose child it really is."

John mutely nodded, then opened his mouth as though to speak, only to frown and remain quiet. Sherlock raised a brow at him.

"I perfectly understand that the opportunity would not present itself often. That particular mailman delivers once a week and his visits are brief. But it doesn't take long to do the deed, John, and you've seen the state of her, the greasy hair and the yeasty complexion. He's going in for a quick in and out. We're not talking about romance here. I'd say he was paying for it, but even that is unlikely. They are both rather desperate, but unsociable sorts."

John cleared his throat and frowned again, and Sherlock nodded at his insight. "Exactly, John. The real worry is that infant in her care, for her hygiene practises aren't exactly adequate. If we start seeing sores, we'll have to call social services again. She didn't do well with the first one, this second attempt isn't likely to fare much better."

Mycroft started the car and adjusted her rear view mirror, catching John grinning at her, his brown eyes alight at her attention. "Thank you as always, John, for your hard work earlier, and for keeping mum about our little arrangement in front of Grace. You're my special treasure." She turned in her seat to face him and he was giving her his usual worshipful grin. "Did you eat all your lunch?"

He nodded and handed her back his Star Wars lunch box, ready to be cleaned and filled again in the morning over breakfast. She reached across the back of the passenger seat and gave him a gentle pat on his cheek which sent John into paroxysms of red faced blushing and intense grinning. Grace's friend Manny often called him her little puppy and it was an apt description for John was all stubby limbs and a slightly rounded gut that could be interpreted as a milk tummy.

She was pulling out of the London Holding parking lot when Sherlock dropped his bomb. "Mother called me twice again after we left this morning."

Mycroft tried to not let her irritation show. "If she calls tell her it's paid for and hang up on her."

"She's demanding we visit."

"She's not getting what she wants, Sherlock, I have no intention of being trapped in that cottage with that woman." She pulled out into traffic too fast, the car weaving through the lanes like a drunken spider. Any conversation that had to do with their mother was a bad one, and Mycroft had become adept at deflecting it, though Sherlock lacked that ability. Wasn't it enough they had been raised by her, isolated by the world and forced to entertain the constant stream of wealthy men and snobbish wives, their mother little more than a whore in the latter's estimations? Bad enough that Sherlock had found the need to escape when he was only fifteen years old and had spent too long of a time on London's streets before Mycroft found him, but she'd paraded her only daughter in front of elderly, creepy men, in vile hopes of marrying her off like good breeding stock to pop millionaires out of her womb. Even now she shuddered at the memory of those dinner parties, men twice her age and even older sliding hidden hands up her thigh and her mother giving her an encouraging wink, completely oblivious to the fact it was assault and not flirtation.

She'd found a new home in university, thankfully, and it was during her last year of a political science doctorate with an incongruous minor in fine arts that she realized how good she was at stealing. Hungry and scrambling for work with a degree that few found useful, and surrounded by the very types she'd always hated, Mycroft had fashioned herself into a fiction, giving those she encountered the impression she held vast wealth and was untouchable all while pilfering their less obvious precious stones. Sometimes it took years for them to realize that anything was missing. Jewels were investments, padding upon ego, and just the knowledge of ownership was often enough.

She hadn't bothered with romantic entanglements, she'd witnessed how messy they were and the men she was forced to associate with were all blatant misogynists, using women in much the same way they used a fancy car or a good meal, a means to their own pleasures without a thought to their human ornaments. She had believed that all unions were made the same way despite what silly romantic notions people believed and she was immune to its lie.

Until she met Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade, that is. Grace, who had wiped her brow and dried her tears with such a tender touch after that horrible fiasco with Ulstead. Grace who had called her a few days later, genuinely worried and hoping she was all right. Grace, who stopped by with a bottle of wine unexpectedly two weeks after that, telling her they'd caught the guy who did it and was that Sherlock weirdo really her brother?

Grace, who had softly kissed her and made her heart flutter like a hummingbird's wing. Grace, who didn't care about money, or fancy anything, and who didn't give a toss if Mycroft stole jewels or shoved them up people's arses so long as no one died and no one was hurt.

Grace, who was genuinely kind, a rare bird near extinct this days. Grace, who held her soul together.

"You missed the entrance," Sherlock complained.

Mycroft brought the car back around the front of the decrepit building on Baker Street where Sherlock and John shared a cramped, unkempt little flat. Mrs. Hudson, their slumlord, was standing on the front steps, her twiggy arms crossed, her heavily made up face sneering at them as Mycroft parked the car in front of the crumbling steps and bid both John and Sherlock to go up. She knew Mrs. Hudson hated Mycroft's visits to the building, taking in her neat appearance and the fancy car and figuring she could up the rent a good couple of hundred dollars if government controls hadn't been put into place. Mycroft rolled her eyes at Mrs. Hudson's glaring and leaned towards the car door, forcing Mrs. Hudson to leave her perch at the steps and come down to face her. "He's paid his rent. I want those cupboards fixed or I'll be taking to the rental tribunal. I've done it before, I'll do it again."

"This is harassment," Mrs. Hudson sneered.

"It's basic maintenance," Mycroft shot back. "The only reason this place hasn't been condemned yet is because you put in a fire alarm on the fourth floor. There's still no proper running water, the stove doesn't work, there's no cupboards and no refrigerator. If the heat goes off again this winter you'll be getting the full court treatment, that is a promise!"

Mrs. Hudson stared at her with eyes so dead she could have been a belly up goldfish. "He was late a week with the rent."

"And now you have it though you don't deserve it. John, Sherlock...Off you go and don't get into trouble. We'll see you in the morning for breakfast, seeing as how there's no way you can make any for yourselves. There's children living in this building, Mrs. Hudson. Children who do not have heat or running water. You should ashamed of yourself."

The less time she spent in the miserable woman's presence the better and as soon as John and Sherlock were out of the car she peeled off from the curb, eager to get back into the rush of traffic and away from the crumbling poverty that stank of greed's castoffs. When she arrived back at her lovely, Victorian Belgravia estate her happiness was further tempered by the appearance of her neighbour's awful house across the street. A house that was now finally missing a dog.

She marched into her own home, keys tossed into the brown wooden bowl by the door, and the deer-like leap of a very tall, delicate dog approaching her with caution, the greeting both deferential and affectionate. Mycroft petted the borzoi who sank into her touch with grateful sweetness and then happily followed her into the kitchen, its nails catching on the black and white tiled flooring like little hooves.

Her cell phone rang and she answered it. "I take it we now have a dog?" Grace asked. A sharp bark rang out and Mycroft playfully hushed the borzoi standing at attention beside her.

"We do. But I must say, Grace, there is far more to this neighbour of ours than meets the eye and none of it good. The dog is the least of your worries, for I suspect they are up to something criminal in that house and you'd be wise to investigate it."

Grace groaned at this. "So, what are you saying? Are there dead bodies in the basement, then?"

Mycroft hesitated, gooseflesh rising along her arms at the unpleasant memory. "I don't think so, but I can tell you that it is no home I've ever seen before and well you know that I am an expert on the way people conduct their private lives and what they truly treasure. There is nothing valued there, the decor inside, what scant little there is of it, is all doctor's office functionality with little by way of actual personality. Industrial tiles are laid out in the living room and from what I can see it's being set up as a sort of sitting area, though without any pleasant ambiance." Mycroft took a deep breath before continuing, and fought to keep the shiver from her voice. "But the basement, Grace. It was odd. Lots of little rooms, no bigger than a closet each, about ten in all. And in each one, a stained mattress just tossed on the floor. It's still being renovated and the walls around the rooms aren't fully finished yet, but I get the feeling its already had some kind of vile use." Mycroft swallowed, the borzoi whining at her thigh beside her. "That is not a place meant to be a home. You really do need to investigate those people."

Grace was quiet a long moment, a rustle of papers meeting Mycroft's ear and a mumbled discussion with someone, though Mycroft couldn't detect what the small conversation was about. Grace came back to the phone, distracted. "Yeah, that was Marcus from up in records. Looks like we got some trouble, then." Grace paused, as though wondering if it was wise to continue. "Look, don't go near that neighbour's house again, yeah? You got the dog now, so...Just stay away from it."

Mycroft frowned. "Those mattresses..." she said.

"Not your business any more. I'm on it. What you can do is tell me if either of those bastards shows up back there and let me know right away so I can send a squad team."

Mycroft felt her stomach squeeze in fright. "What do you mean? What's going on, what do you know?"

"They are bad people, just like you thought," Grace carefully told her. "Boris Stanislov and Anastasia Yuri. They're skin traffickers from Russia and they're the newest members of the Crown Cartel."

 

 

  



	5. plastic and perverts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace uncovers some things about her neighbours she most certainly did not want to know.
> 
> WARNING: for inferred gross illegal things and prostitution and dead bodies, just saying....

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter five

DI Grace Lestrade stood in the middle of the large, unfinished house, hands on hips. The air was thick with drywall dust and tasted chalky on her tongue. Police and forensics scoured the area, searching for evidence of crime, which didn't take them long, the mattresses instantly tested positive for semen and blood with a side order of heroin. This place was being constructed as a bawdy house right under her nose and if Mycroft hadn't worried about the dog she never would have noticed. She cursed and fought the urge to kick herself.

She glanced out the back door and saw the empty cage where the dog had been kept, her stomach dropping. Mycroft had been foolish coming in here, if those bastards had seen her there's no telling what they might have done. Worse still, Grace could picture it, the mattresses telling enough of a story on their own. She closed her eyes against it and swallowed back bile with effort.

Manny had crept out of the St. Mary's morgue to come and lend a hand to forensics, especially when she learned it was Grace's neighbour who was being raided. There weren't any dead bodies for her to work on, thankfully, but Manny was experienced enough in blood and guts to give a valued opinion on whether or not there had been enough spilled to warrant a suspicion of murder. Manny stepped into the house, grin wide and blonde hair tied up in a messy top bun, her tanned skin sweaty.

"Went for a run before I got here," she explained. "Didn't have time to change out of my spandex at the gym when I heard what happened. Take me to the basement, it's my favourite place."

"I really don't know why I called you in," Grace said, shaking her head. "The bastards have done a runner, it's obvious, and they didn't exactly keep house here. The upper level is full of unfinished rooms, and they look more like doctor's offices than anything remotely attached to seedy sex. I keep getting the feeling there's a kink being fed here and you know how those turn out."

Manny made a disgusted face. "Grown men in diapers, excrement on the walls, is that the sort of thing we're thinking here?"

"I dunno. But there's no privacy in that basement even if there are mattresses laid out down there. The drywall isn't even up yet. We came in here guns blazing thinking we were doing a hardcore rescue only to be greeted by an ugly half renovated, empty house." Grace rubbed the back of her neck and felt drywall grit against her palm. "I have no idea what they were doing here. The kitchen has an island set up with all metal shelving and prep tables like what you see in restaurants. Everything painted in washed out,discount pastels. One ratty toilet for the whole house, makes you wonder where these girls of theirs were going to go to the loo." Grace shuddered as she looked around the gutted space in the living room, layers of plastic tarp separating it from the hallway and the front door. Ugly glass and chrome and industrial tiles gave it all the ambiance of an office building lobby.

'Easy to clean,' Grace thought. 'You could use a power washer even on this floor to scrub it up.'

The stairs leading to the basement were simple pine though it was clear there were more sturdy plans in mind and these were only temporary. Partition rough-ins lined the large shadowed space, illuminated at intervals by the flash of a forensics camera. Manny walked ahead of her, the mattress with the most blood taking her immediate attention. There were half a dozen of them in all, placed almost like markers in each sectioned off space, as though it were a promise of privacy. They weren't closets as Mycroft had described, but then anything smaller than a master suite seemed like one to her. They were normal sized rooms, with electrical hook ups and outlets for lighting.

No bathroom, or shower, however. Just a utility sink and a very large hose wrapped up and neatly tacked against the far wall on an iron bracket. A drain in the middle of the floor would suffice in taking all the filth away. Looking at it made Grace feel sick.

Manny bent close to the mattress, frowning as she sniffed the air above it. Grace turned away, unable to look at her. As if Mycroft had been this stupid, walking into this cesspit, heedless of all its dangers! She could have been murdered here this morning. Grace could have been standing over her corpse this very second, the blood fresh and foul, Mycroft's piercing green gaze glassily staring off into an unknowable abyss.

Grace clasped her palm over her mouth and forced her heaving stomach to relax. Mycroft wasn't here now, in fact she was just next door, standing in the large bay window staring out of it at the crowds of police scrambling over their neighbour's property. She had even waved at Grace as she stormed with her team into the unfinished house, and it took every ounce of will Grace had in her not to march into her own home and grab her by the shoulders and shake Mycroft until common sense finally took root in her.

Manny paused over the stained mattress, a deep frown marring her tanned forehead. She leaned over it and sniffed, then sniffed again. Rolling back on her heels, she stood up, puzzled. "That's weird. I mean, really weird."

Grace shrugged. "I don't need suspense, Manny, what is?"

"The mattress, it smells like formaldehyde."

Grace choked on this information.

Yeah, she really was going to be tossing up breakfast now, this was seriously too much even for her.

"What are you suggesting? You see what these are. Flop house mattresses for quick sale and showing wear and tear from use. What are we looking at, Manny?"

Manny's disgust matched her own and considering she usually had her hands elbows deep in rotted bodies the fact this grossed her out only amplified the feeling in Grace. "Semen. Blood, but it's old. Formaldehyde. This is a body house, all right, but the implications are pretty clear." Manny made a strangled sound, and she turned away from the mattress and headed back up the stairs to the main floor, Grace closely following her. She did a quick scan of the kitchen and living room, her eyes glancing upwards where the sterile rooms were upstairs. "What about this place looks familiar to you?" she asked.

Grace was at a loss. "Not much."

"That's not true. You said it looks like a doctor's office."

"Well, yeah, but..."

"Steel tables, hoses, harsh overhead lights." Manny choked and placed a fist at her lips, holding the contents of her stomach in. She took a few moments to compose herself. "This is a morgue, Grace. The rooms upstairs are for fine detailing in the prepping, that's the best guess I can give you. Maybe there's even plans for storage up there, I wouldn't doubt it. Check for refrigeration hook ups in the electrical."

Grace stared at Manny, blank. "But we found semen on the mattress."

"Yes. You did."

Oh fuck. Jesus wept. Fucking fucks.

"So what are you saying?" Grace asked, suddenly hoarse and feeling very green. "This is being made into some kind of necrophiliac's paradise?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Manny replied. "Grace I...I got to go. I don't think I'm going to be able to go into work today..." She gave Grace a withered smile and rubbed her shoulder, a vain attempt to ease the shock. "I'll see you tomorrow night. Seven o'clock, right?"

Grace blinked, not remembering until Manny was nearly out of sight. Today was Tuesday and Manny had been invited over for dinner on Wednesday, along with John and Sherlock. They were going to have a house full.

Grace glanced at the stained mattress still feeling sick. She had never been so thankful that Mycroft was vegan.

~*~

"You're quite out of sorts. Was it really that bad over there? Have you found the girls they were trafficking?" Mycroft tutted at her silence and wrapped her long arms around Grace's slumped shoulders. "The day is early yet, but I don't think a glass of good wine is out of order." She kissed Grace's brow and Grace felt the sudden urge to just melt into her and accept the soft nuzzle of comfort that Mycroft's living pulse brought with it. She allowed herself to be corralled into the living room, and seated on the large couch which she now had to share with a very beautiful, graceful young lady of regal bearing. Said lady shifted where she lay and pressed her long, streamlined head onto Grace's lap, her warmth admittedly delightful. Grace sighed and scratched the borzoi behind the ears, the dog practically purring in ecstasy.

She fit in well here, Grace thought, taking in the large, red couch with its baroque cherry wood frame and the large fern that was practically a tree separating the living room from the adjoining kitchen. A fireplace was cold before her, it wouldn't be lit again until September, the black and white ceramic tiles pleasantly cool beneath the feet now that it was summer. Red, suede walls encompassed the space, with the large paintings of jungle animals looking on, making the whole house feel vaguely Victorian and tropical. Grace accepted her glass of chilled wine, grateful. Mycroft leaned onto the armrest of the couch by her side, her slender hip pressed against Grace's arm. "I found the dog abandoned in the backyard, locked up in that awful cage as always, no food or water at all. You should have seen how she gobbled up a meal and sucked in a gallon of water. They did this to a dog, I can't imagine what those monsters could have done to a human being."

"I don't think you want to," Grace cryptically answered, and refused to elaborate. She wrapped her hand around the dog's muzzle and playfully petted her, the warmth of the slender neck and its curly angora fur giving her nerves a good padding in soft velvet. "The house is completely abandoned, they won't be returning. I guess they figured the dog would be too much of a burden on them while they're on the lam. Hard to say why they did leave as abruptly as they did, they clearly had big plans for the place. It couldn't have been easy getting in touch with the...The 'clientele' they were catering to." Grace leaned her head on Mycroft's shoulder, liking the way the bone curved just so to make it the perfect pillow. "We found out they were living there thanks to a receipt for an unrelated purchase in Soho. Shoes, of all things. Cheap, high heeled Aldo's. Anastasia had left the clerk her postal code at the time of purchase. Marcus traced it back to this neighbourhood and after what you told me I put it all together." Grace took a gulp of wine before kissing Mycroft's shoulder. "You should never have gone over there. The whole time I'm wandering through that house I'm seeing your dead body in every room. Don't do that again."

"That kind of evil, right on our doorstep. Not the sort of thing I would say I'm accustomed to, nor do I like the shadow of it. It's put a taint on this house, quite frankly. Perhaps it's time to move."

Grace chuckled at this. "You always say that about this house and yet here we still are. This is our home, Mycroft, and when those front doors are closed there is no better sanctuary. Besides, Sherlock is such a creature of routine and habit he'd never be able to find a new place, he'd still come back here, looking for us. And we can't possibly disorient poor John!"

"No, I don't suppose we should." Mycroft kissed the top of Grace's head and then slid off the edge of the couch and journeyed into the kitchen, her bare feet leaving imprints on the alternating black ceramic tiles. "Manny is still coming over for dinner tomorrow night, I take it?"

"Yeah. Highlight of her month."

"She needs to get out more."

"You know how it is. The dead are always knocking."

"I'll get the Wellington prepped for it tonight." Mycroft mulled this over as she went back into her kitchen. She had shed most of her power suit, her grey pinstripe skirt now wrinkled at the thighs and her pink silk blouse now rolled up to her elbows as she began opening cupboard doors and taking out ingredients. Fastidious and calm, Mycroft imbibed the air with her special brand of confidence and gentle ease and Grace found herself revelling in it. She turned on the couch and lay beside the accommodating dog, the wine glass still careless in her grip as she watched Mycroft's careful preparations in the adjoining kitchen.

Mycroft glanced up and gave her a small smile. "I do believe you have a new best friend."

"She's a bit of a slut, actually. I only just met her and look, she's all over me."

"Dogs are excellent judges of character," Mycroft reminded her. "I wouldn't expect her to react to you in any other way."

"You hear that?" Grace said to the borzoi, who looked up at her with large, limpid black eyes. "She's pawning me off on you."

"She should feel privileged, I don't leave a massive responsibility like that on just anyone." Mycroft opened the refrigerator and took vegetables out of the crisper, ominous looking portabello mushrooms laid out in a line beside her cutting board. "You're home early for a murder case, I would have thought with the raid going on just next door you'd still be there, slugging through the evidence."

Grace groaned and took another gulp of wine. "It's not a homicide. Drugs, yes. Other things that aren't related to my department, yes...Don't give me that questioning brow, I'm not getting into it and you'll thank me for that, you really will."

Mycroft began slicing mushrooms, each slice in perfect geometrical symmetry. "I saw Sherlock and John again today, I had to make sure Mrs. Hudson understood that I knew she had been paid. I can't understand how the City of London allows for that hellhole to remain standing, it's practically crumbling apart, the outside structure fragile enough to pick out bricks with your bare hands. the inside a mess of cracked drywall, damp and insects fighting for space with the rats. The whole thing needs to be condemned and she needs to be put in jail for making poverty stricken families live like that. Honestly, Grace, it's dreadful, it makes your getaway flat in Enfield look like a castle."

"Complete with drafty windows," Grace added.

"Laugh all you like, I feel terrible for those people. There's children living there."

Grace sipped at her wine, her mood suddenly thoughtful. "You went to the bank, then, and got your business all sorted."

"That was the main bulk of my day, yes. Exhausting. The bank manager is always trying to pawn some weary investment in this or that on me and I know all of it is crap and it's just to glean more interest off the top. He always comments on my perfume. Does he comment on his male client's cologne, and how pretty those pockmarked Lombard Street wolves smell? I should think not." The mushrooms sliced, she was now working on carrots, the root vegetables earning her ire as the knife hit the cutting board.

Grace cleared her throat. She thought about emptying her glass and then placed it on the cool floor instead, making sure it was a black tile and not a white wine in case its base stained it red.

"That business with your mum..."

"Mother is taken care of," Mycroft curtly replied. The carrots were being beheaded with alarming force.

Chop. Chop.

Grace carefully peeled herself away from the borzoi, who was disappointed she had decided to leave her pleasant spot on the sofa. The dog watched her walk away with a pathetic sort of longing that pulled on Grace's heart and made her wonder just the hell had been done to the poor thing. "We should really name it."

"I was thinking Catherine, after Catherine the Great."

"Or Anastasia, if you don't mind a visit from Rasputin once in a while, or bloodthirsty Bolsheviks." Grace's lips twisted into an ugly line as she thought on the sex trafficker Anastasia Yuri. "On second thought, Catherine is fine."   
  
She placed her mostly empty glass on the kitchen island and watched Mycroft chop into an onion so quickly it didn't have time to sting her eyes. Garlic was smashed with the handle of chef knife and given a similar treatment. Talk of her mother even in passing had upset her, and Grace wasn't sure how to mend it. Her own family had long stopped talking to her, back when she first came out and announced during a family dinner that she was a lesbian. She had a good idea the staunch Catholics at that table weren't going to accept her--they never had, really--but the pain of her three elder brothers and her younger sister going in line with her parents in their belief that she was an unrepentant sinner doomed to hell was a cruel blow. She'd walked out of the family home at eighteen and never bothered looking back. Ten years later she heard from one of her brothers who wanted to make amends after seeing her interviewed on the telly about a homicide case (even then she was being groomed for that division) but their conversations remained strained. A person never got over the rejection of who they were by those who claimed to love them without condition. If she'd been a murderer her mother would have found it easier, Grace thought, to still see and talk to her daughter. Murder was something she understood, but loving someone deeply of the 'wrong' gender, well...Talk about an inability to know which battles to pick.

"Stop thinking about your family." Mycroft had a sixth sense when it came to that topic, and she didn't tolerate it any more than she would have had any one of them suddenly shown up on her doorstep.

Grace slid around the kitchen island and wrapped her arms around Mycroft's shapeless but slender waist, pulling her close against her chest. She kissed the outline of her ear, softly. "You're all the family I need."

"Don't give Catherine a complex, she's a part of our little circle now, too."

The idea was creeping up again, like it did in moments like this, when it was just the two of them enjoying a nice night in, work not having stolen Grace until the small hours and Sherlock and John thankfully absent. The concept ran through Grace's veins and along the gooseflesh of Mycroft's bare arms as her hands smoothed their way along the warm flesh, a pulsing wish buried within.

They could have a kid. It wouldn't be a terrible thing, either, she was still young enough, she could carry it, or Mycroft, whoever got there first, they could make a game of it, even. Get a donor, get the in vitro at that clinic in Chelsea. It could happen so easily. But the window on that idea was closing, it was creeping shut with every year they never discussed it, and the echo of Mycroft's soft voice cascading throughout the house felt like a heavy door being locked and shut.

"I'll make a roasted red pepper Alfredo tonight, using that cauliflower cheese sauce recipe I found on Pinterest," Mycroft whispered back. "And a frissee and napa cabbage salad with a maple mustard vinaigrette. It's a copy of the one we had at the Dorchester Hotel that time. We really should make a new reservation."

Grace kissed the pounding pulse on Mycroft's long, slender neck, teeth lightly grazing the vein and sending an erotic shudder through the willowy thief. "Sure. I'll leave the dead where they lay, next time."

~*~

"Marry me."

Soaked in sweat, tears smudging her mascara, her coral lipstick smeared across her cheek, Mycroft lay beneath her, her bare arm cast over her head in wanton relief. Her thighs were still quivering in protracted orgasm induced aftershocks, and she bucked at the teasing touch Grace longed to force her to endure. She was spent, torn apart and as fragile as a bruised rose petal.

"Marry me. Please."

How she loved her like this, eyes glassy with lust and barely able to think let alone speak, the truth of Mycroft's heart spilling out in this exact request, one that had been made before, and often. Grace knew how much it hurt, the way she hesitated, that Mycroft didn't fully understand the burden of tradition and past expectations had fouled the idea of that union a long time ago. Grace's mother was married to an abusive alcoholic who she would never leave because her religion told her divorce was a cardinal sin. For Grace, such traditions were made for suffering, not joy.

But damn if it wasn't difficult to deny Mycroft anything she wanted in moments like this, when she was pleading and weeping, the rush of need rising within Grace in a volcanic passion that had her leaning down and wrapping Mycroft tight in her arms, determined that nothing in this world or any other would ever harm her. Because unlike those little shiny rocks she stole, Mycroft was priceless. Grace took her mouth with bruising force, making sure she knew it.

They were both gasping by the time Grace broke the kiss, and her elbow was sore as she remained propped up beside her, watching as the renewed shudders coursed through every inch of Mycroft's long, lean body. She wasn't model skinny, in fact she was thicker around the waist and wide in the shoulders, muscular but not what was termed 'thin'. She was a sharp contrast to Grace's shorter, stocky frame, chunkily leaning towards softness instead of hard muscle with not one rib visible and her booty bruised from being squeezed by Mycroft's strong, nimble fingers.

Mycroft leaned over her and opened the drawer on the small table next to their bed, plucking out a pack of cigarillos. She couldn't just smoke a fag, not Mycroft, she had to have the best poison and this particular brand had the heady scent of quality cigars. She only took those out when she'd had a particularly good night, so Grace bit her tongue against telling her the expensive coffin nails were a hedonist's reward and would lead her straight to hell some day. Mycroft reminded her that was where all of her family and friends were going and thus Heaven must be a miserable place. The lit ember at the end of cigarillo burned bright in the soft darkness of their room.

Besides, not being a regular smoker meant Mycroft shared, and as the ash tipped into the glass bowl placed between them, Grace took the cigarillo from her and enjoyed a long, drawn out puff.

"This morning I had a ring in my possession I could have bought entire continents with," Mycroft said. Grace watched as her lips curled around the filter of the cigarillo, soft and pouting as though kissing it. She could watch Mycroft like this all night, draped in her bed like some feline femme fatale, pulling her into her smoky, sultry confidence. Grace hugged her pillow and smiled at the beauty of her, finding it impossible to turn away.

"Should I arrest you, then, for having something like that? I imagine you stole it. You stole half the world away."

"It seems I have lost it." Mycroft slid onto her side, facing Grace and balancing herself on her elbow as she tapped the ashen tip of the cigarillo into the small glass bowl. Her small breasts were nearly hidden beneath the shadowed length of her body. "I thought about putting it on your finger and forcing the issue. Hard to say no with a rock like that past your knuckles."

"I think I could find a way," Grace said, bemused.

"Really? After all that effort? And you know it was exceptional, I did say it could buy *continents* and that's no small bauble, and thus no small job in its acquiring. Putting a rock like that on your finger would have you bent to my will, and subsequently all of the pleasures that would bring."

"Not so sure about that. I'm a stubborn bitch."

"True." Mycroft held her cigarillo aloft, her eyes, now blue, twinkling in the half light of their bedroom. "Marry me."

"We're back to that. Can't see how, you've lost the ring."

Mycroft giggled, her grin luminescent in the gloom. "You are an incorrigible creature!"

"Finally. A label that fits."

Mycroft held the cigarillo above her head as they kissed, her free hand dancing along the dip of Grace's waist, fingers kneading her warm skin. When she pulled back her eyes were hazy, filled with unspoken endearments that Grace kissed away before they could leave her tender mouth. "We have a dog now," Grace said, smirking. "Stolen. Stolen engagement ring, stolen dog, I'm seeing a pattern here. You aren't going to steal kids when we're ready to have them, are you?"

Mycroft shrugged. "Depends on the circumstances."

"And you say I'm the impossible one." Grace groaned and rolled onto her back. "I can just see it now, getting the call that there's been a break-in at the local orphanage and little Annie has gone missing."

"I'd never steal Little Orphan Annie," Mycroft stated. "She has no iris or pupils, she's shockingly creepy."

"No zombie Annie for you, then?"

"No."

Mycroft stubbed out her cigarillo into the small glass bowl between them and Grace neatly plucked it out of their way, placing it on the nightstand. She pulled Mycroft close to her, until their foreheads were touching. "I love you."

Mycroft smiled against her nose and lightly kissed its tip. "My heart sings at the reciprocation."

"You can't just say 'I love you, too'?"

Mycroft pouted. "A love as fierce as this does not dare to be so pedestrian." She snuggled close into Grace's embrace, like a sleek jungle cat tucking into a warm spot. "Wake me when the world is perfect."

Grace found her happiness stumbling over this, for there was no way to make that promise, not with creeps doing vile things to *corpses*--bloody hell!--so she thought about it and realized that what Mycroft was really saying was that she never wanted this moment between them to end, and Grace was in perfect agreement with *that*.

~*~  
The borzoi, Catherine, gently nudged John Watson's palm, and John sneakily obliged, giving her little squares of tofu from his Japanese styled breakfast when Mycroft wasn't looking. Grace watched with a kind of bored fascination at the subterfuge, both dog and man giving Mycroft the exact same expression every time she turned around and John had just tossed a tofu treat. Sherlock, of course, was complaining that a Japanese styled breakfast was nothing without okonomiyaki, which he insisted on Mycroft making along with sriracha mayo on the side, which was of the utmost importance despite it not being a Japanese invention. Sherlock was the usual mess, greasy hair hanging in strings at his shoulders, the trench coat somehow earning more holes than usual, his heels poking out the back of his once very expensive Italian leather loafers. John was a sharp contrast, as boring and neat and tidy as ever, with his soft brown jumper and a pair of tan cargo pants that fell in folds at his heel like a toddler's would. 'He looks like someone who should be sitting in reclining chair in an old folk's home,' Grace thought. She took in a hefty portion of sushi rice seasoned with seaweed and inwardly balked at the very idea of having something fishy for breakfast. Throwing away tofu was suddenly a very logical thing to do and Grace snuck a cube to the borzoi who licked it out of her grasp like a butterfly to nectar.

"Stop that!" Mycroft admonished her, and John smirked at Grace getting caught out.

Grace pointed at John. "He started it!"

"He did not! Don't give that to the dog, it'll upset her stomach!"

"Don't know why you stole a dog," Sherlock said, stuffing his face with rice and whatever else caught his fancy. "We never had one growing up, no pets at all not even a goldfish. We were deprived children, bereft of love from both the animal and human spheres. I daresay it's why I turned out the way I did." He pulled out his morning wake and bake from one of the many pockets in his trench coat and slipped unevenly off of the bar stool at the kitchen island. He slid the blunt under his nose, breathing it in. "I'll be right back."

"They aren't addictive, you know," Grace said, her cup of green tea being enjoyed solely for show. "Studies say that the great green herb is easy to quit, and it is solely human choice that creates this constant need. It ain't no ciggie, it's called an herb for a reason, though I'd hesitate to use it in place of oregano."

"It would make for a very relaxed pasta dinner," Mycroft agreed.

She was lovely this morning, in clothes with softer lines, thick beige silk blouse, understated gold jewellery and light brown slacks. She'd traded coral lipstick for a refreshing pink. Gone were the smudges Grace had woken up to. She looked refreshed, energetic and happy, her day full of purpose.

"You don't understand anything," Sherlock said, near sneering at Grace as he rolled the tips of his joint between his fingers. "This is about the expansion of the mind, encompassing the varieties of experience that culminate in this tiny, smokeable plant. You judge what you don't know, Inspector Lestrade. You look, but you don't see."

"I see that you're already so stoned your eyes are so bloodshot they match the walls."

"You are a judgemental, unthinking sort of person, and I will not abide you."

"I don't have to hear your nonsense for the next while, then? Bloody brilliant!" Grace downed the rest of her green tea with a grimacing gulp and made a motion to hold off more being poured for her. "No. Coffee from this point on, I'm afraid, this whole detox with greenery thing is making me feel like a wilted salad. Remember, Manny is coming over for dinner tonight and you know how she loves to talk shop. Make something easily digestible for those of us with queasy stomachs."

She left them all, then, giving Mycroft a quick kiss on her cheek as her lithe girlfriend made sandwiches and snacks for John, wrapping them carefully in wax paper and placing them in a neat stack into his Star Wars lunchbox. She patted the friendly borzoi's head, the dog giving Grace a subtle lick before she headed out the front door, her briefcase full of dead people and their unfortunate problems swinging ahead of her.

The drive into the Yard was especially nerve wracking this morning, traffic along Piccadilly backed up for near an hour while a stalled tourist bus was towed away. She cursed at the honking horns and impatient pedestrians weaving their way through the melee, as though determined to become road kill. She never understood why people honked horns when traffic slowed to nothing. All it ever did was exacerbate tension, and make the driver behind them hate them all the more.

So, really, she was in a bad mood by the time she made it into the Yard and went to park in her spot only to find it was already occupied. Furious, she drove up alongside the large town car, the waist of her BMW near scraping alongside. Getting out was a problem since she was boxed in on the driver's side and the passenger door was blocked by a large, concrete support pillar. It took a bit of scrambling to make her exit through the back seat and out the back passenger door.

She fought the urge to kick at the bumper of the car that was squatting in her spot.

Powell's car. Bloody fantastic. The son of a bitch sure knew how to start a fight from nothing.

Huffing like a bulldog, Grace stormed into the building, making her way up to homicide division without so much as a 'good morning' to every familiar face she met. The nerve of that asshole! She hated that she was allowing him to rile her, that was his plan all along, but her gut was reacting and he was pressing all her angry buttons. She wasn't surprised to find the weasel faced bastard standing beside her desk, idly going through her files as though he was bored and she was late for a personal meeting. She made a point to snatch the file of the dead prozzie from his hands and stuff it into her small filing cabinet attached to her desk.

"Any reason you're sniffing around my cold cases?" she asked.

Powell puffed out his chest, his too wide tie dwarfing him and making him seem small and sneaky. He gave Grace an oily smile and smoothed down the ugly tie, a brown and tan monstrosity that lost favour with fashion somewhere back in 1976. He was courting his Serpico look again, Grace thought with disgust. All he needed was Al Pacino standing in the background, sucking on a toothpick.

"I hear you're hanging around mixed company these days, though I don't suppose it should surprise me. Belgravia has been going through a particular brand of nouveau riche, and I suspect a good lot of them don't care if their neighbours are sex traffickers, drug dealers or the whores of well established jewel thieves."

She tried to let the dig at Mycroft roll off of her for there was nothing more Powell loved to do than pull her into his psychotic, paranoid web of blame, doing all he could to pressure Mycroft into her 'giving up her boyfriend and talking'. Clueless and classless, Powell regarded Grace with that kind of sweaty doughy personality that pervaded men of his type, and she shuddered at being forced to be in such close proximity to him.   
  
"There are a number of active departments in that investigation into the bawdy house in Belgravia," Grace said.

"Body house. I like that. Especially considering that's all that was really kept there. Tell me, did anyone interview Mycroft Holmes? I want a team sent, her house searched, top to bottom, I want forensics on hand..."

Grace held up hers. "If you don't mind, I could use an explanation. Why are you concentrating on Mycroft, she has nothing to do with this. We already have the names of the Russian sex traffickers, Anastasia Yuri and Boris..."

"Yes, yes, all very pat and set in stone, I'm sure, but the facts are they were *neighbours* of a woman who is very closely associated with the Blue Danube and it would be foolish of me to ignore this. If the Crown Cartel is starting up again in London, which you most definitely believe, then it stands to reason they will be harassing Mycroft Holmes as well. Her brother did rat out one of their favourite dealers, and they are still smarting from that lack of loyalty." He turned on Grace, a slippery eel ready to wind around her legs with slimy purpose. "I don't like homicide division snooping in areas where it doesn't belong, no more than you like it when special crimes peeks through your window blinds."

Grace felt her stomach sink. "Are you seriously suggesting you've been peeking through Mycroft's windows?"

Powell was unapologetic. "Personally, I think her decor is a tad too Mediterranean for the original architecture, and red is an angry colour."

Grace braced her head in her hands and pressed her fingertips tight against her temples, the effort doing little to quell the growing headache beginning to alight along her tense nerves. "The bodies got dead somehow and it's possible not all of them kicked off naturally. Besides, even if it is a necrophilia ring as Manny suspects, it still falls into my department. Corpses are my speciality, Powell, not yours, and you know it."

Powell's face was scrunched so tight in displeasure he looked like he'd eaten a basket of lemons and was still chewing on the rinds. "Necrophilia. Is there any true depth of depravity the Blue Danube will not sink into? I actually have empathy for that ex girlfriend of his, the danger she courted in making him her paramour could have ended much worse. But she's still in his web, I can sense it, and it's up to me to make sure she remains safe."

Grace cocked a brow at this. "You do know I've been in a relationship with Mycroft for the past five years."

Powell shrugged, the romanticism of his own version of reality the only perspective he could entertain. Grace really wanted to punch him, her fists clenching reflexively. "Detective Lestrade, some issues are just embedded too deep and the passions too strong to be ignored. Miss Mycroft Holmes is a person for whom I feel a great deal of..."

"Opportunity," Grace stated, cutting him off. "You don't care about her safety, if you did you would be putting her pothead brother on surveillance and making sure the threats from the Crown Cartel didn't suddenly turn from farce into fact. So no, I don't think it's necessary to bring Mycroft Holmes in for questioning, and if you bring it up one more time I'll be having you up on renewed charges of harassment against me and my family."

Powell's sour look made her sick. He rapped his knuckles on the corner of her desk, his sympathy traded for animosity. "This isn't over. She knows something and I'm going to get that jewel thieving bastard through her if it's the last thing I do."

'And it just might be', Grace thought as the weasel faced man left her desk and the homicide division, his hands jangling change in his pocket with aggressive agitation. She had to step carefully around this case, she realized, because Powell sure as hell didn't like having his pet project played with, even if the case involved issues skirting its periphery. She'd call Mycroft later and tell her to keep the curtains closed. The thought of Powell peeping in their windows made bile rise in her throat.

It was to be a common theme this day, for not five minutes after Powell left his unpleasant imprint on the air Grace received an another international phone call from Officer Xao.

"We have a full description of the buyer," Xao told her over a crackling phone line. Shouts in Mandarin behind her momentarily distracted her only for her voice to return with less interference. "Sorry about that. I have a junior officer who thinks it is funny to turn the modems on and off while I am making international calls. Tingzhi ni yuchun de chunhuo!"

"What kind of details have you got for me?" Grace had her pen and battered notebook ready. This had to be good if Xao was making this kind of effort.

"A description of the buyer. She is a woman in her fifties, maybe even early sixties, very thin, Russian accent and dressed in very tailored clothing. She wore a lot of make-up, so much her foundation was cracking. That's what the witness said."

"Witness?"

"A young man who did the janitorial work at the body factory we raided. He was too nervous the first time I talked to him, but it didn't take much to make him reveal these kinds of illegal sales that were happening."

"Yeah, it's amazing how some people blend into the background. Poor kid is probably having nightmares."

"He's convinced his ancestors are going to haunt him for participating in their desecration."

"And they say kids these days have no respect for the elders. It certainly sounds like he saw Anastasia Yuri. Did you show him the picture I sent you?"

"Yes, but they said her hair was dyed a different colour, a dark brown, and she looked much older, her cheeks are sunken in and she is very, very skinny, like bones." Xao's voice became muffled as though she was huddling close to the phone to whisper into it. Grace strained to hear her. "The sale of heroin was not done by the body factory, that transport was for personal use and for others she has working for her. The woman was bragging she didn't have to use that kind of 'treat' anymore to keep her girls under control, not with this niche market they are trying out for the Crown Cartel."

"They mentioned it by name?"

"Yes. They were very clear it was a new branch of the Cartel's business and their success depended on how profitable it would prove to be. She said something about it not really being a crime, these kinds of niche markets have a lot of loopholes."

Grace felt her mouth go dry. "What kind of 'niche' market are we talking about here?"

Xao's breathing was heavy on the phone, she really didn't want anyone to overhear her even if she was speaking a foreign language and it was unlikely the rookie goons in her precinct were going to understand her. "There was an order put it by this woman's client, an Englishman. I do not have his name. He wanted an intact family, but one that was more pliant than the usual plastinated corpses. It was a specialized order, and she was complaining they were going to rot too much, that it would be better if he just took one of the 'pliant dolls' they have in their stock."

Grace really did want to throw up.

It's one thing to come to a crazy conclusion. It's another to have it confirmed.

"Pliant dolls?"

"That's what she said."

Grace tapped the tip of her pen onto the thick pad of her notebook, leaving tiny black dots on the crinkled lined paper.

"What are you telling me, Xao?"

"I was hoping you could explain it better to me."

"Okay, I'll give it a go...How about plastinated female corpses being used in place of prostitutes or rubber blow up dolls?"

Xao let out a low whistle. "That is a fucked up thing, my friend."

"It sure is. Talk about perverts going mad for organics. You got anything else you can tell me? Like the amount of money that was exchanged for this, I can't imagine Anastasia Yuri making this kind of effort without it being very profitable."

"She paid ten thousand American each for the corpses, plus additional money for the heroin. She claimed the Englishman buyer paid six times that amount and she was going to ask for a gratuity."

"And we don't know anything about that guy?"

"I only know what the witness told me. They are afraid of saying more and he has already gone into hiding so finding him again will be impossible, he could be anywhere from Dalian to Ganjingzi by now. He did say Anastasia didn't like the buyer. Said he was one of these dumb old money types. She hated having personal meetings with him and sent her partner to deal with him instead because he had really bad breath."

"That's half of our English gentry," Grace said.

Officer LiPing Xao let out a long suffering sigh. Grace could feel the angst of this case seeping its way through the phone and into her skull and chilled bones.

"I wanted to visit London. I thought about buying a ticket and going there, to see the Big Ben and the Charing Cross and the Buckingham Palace." Officer LiPing Xao coughed, dredging up the bad taste still lingering in her mouth. "I think I will go to Alaska instead."

 

 

 


	6. dinner and the dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manny stops by for dinner. Talk of the dead leaves Grace without an appetite. Mycroft gets a nasty note.
> 
> NOTE: UGH, it's taken me so long to create this update! We got a new dog and she's been needing some training so to say the least, I've been distracted. Wouldn't you be, too, if you were faced with this face every morning? http://i68.tinypic.com/10wunwj.jpg

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter six

There is little that compares to treating one's home as one's castle, and Mycroft was especially attuned to the needs of her palace. The fact that Sherlock and John were still hoovering their breakfast and had no real plans set for the rest of the day put a kink in her usual routine, but Mycroft is an adaptable person and as some yard work needed doing she set both her brother and John out into the small backyard of her property to get to work weeding the flowers in her rather neglected garden. Her neighbour, Lord Grayson, was already perched on his open back porch, eager to commiserate with her rough relations. They weren't doing a thing, of course, and in fact were too busy arguing over the misjudging of daisies and how the flowers weren't a weed like people thought and were part of the chamomile family, all the while smoking a different sort of herb in a shared blunt between the three of them.

Mycroft slid Catherine the Great's special collar over her slender face and neck, the wide, embroidered band one often used for greyhounds, and with steps in equal delicate sync they left the Belgravia estate to walk along the main stretch of road, the regal bearing of both dog and human giving them an aura of royalty. Mycroft, for her part, had done her best to give such an impression the proper costume, dressed as she was in a couture Anne Klein pantsuit (acquired in Paris a couple of months ago from the designer's latest summer line, twenty-five hundred pounds)that accentuated her long limbs and hung from her frame in heavy folds of pale peach silk. Understated gold jewellery completed the ensemble, her make-up subtle and yet alluring, her eyes a brilliant, icy blue this time instead of green thanks to a trick of smoky shading beneath her brow. She looked good and she knew it, and she felt pride as she walked in her pair of nondescript flats as they clicked across the pavement in time with the dog's nails. a pair of Nicholas Kirkwood Lola patent leather beige numbers, $1000 American dollars, bought on Amazon.

"Good morning, Miss Holmes."

She smiled at the familiarity of the soft German accent and turned to see Hans Weiberman bowing to her in greeting, his crisp summer linen suit hugging his masculine frame in strained support. He was a bit of a rogue and Grace found his sense of humour tasteless, but Mycroft was quick to remind her that the man was an artist of sorts, even if he did make his millions making slasher horror films that delighted and grossed out the populace that ate that sort of thing up. 'The Human Leech', parts one through seventeen were still a big box office draw and Hans had just finished filming his latest outlier work 'The Human Bedbug' which was apparently a big departure from his other work. Manny was always pressing her to get an autograph from him or better yet a dinner date where she could meet him, but Mycroft held back. Just because someone was thrilled by the fiction of the dead didn't mean they were equally immersed in its fact. Manny couldn't leave the morgue behind. Despite her All American Girl looks and happy, athletic outlook, Manny's macabre work was too much for even the most dedicated horror film buff.

It didn't help that Manny interpreted Hans's bloodbaths as comedies and he would no doubt find her hilarity over its gorier aspects disturbing. So, despite the fact she could easily have made such a meeting happen, Mycroft wisely kept them separated.

"Such a pretty doggie," Hans said and he slowly approached. The borzoi nuzzled his outstretched palm and gave it an approving lick. Hans grinned his approval. "You are lovely this morning, as always, Miss Holmes, but today you are exceptional in your softness. Silks approve your structure. The offer to star in my latest film still stands, 'The Human Dungheap', I think you would appreciate the intricacies of the plot."

"No, thank you, Hans," Mycroft said, backing away graciously with the borzoi side stepping to follow her. "Flattering as the offer is, I have no love for the limelight."

"A shame. You would make an excellent Queen of the Corpse Eating Dung Beetles. You're the only survivor in the film, and after you've feasted on the fetid flesh of your enemies..."

Mycroft's smile was strained. "I appreciate the offer, Hans, but...No."

The borzoi probably needed more of a walk but she'd continue with a longer one later in the afternoon, when she knew Hans would be having one of his marathon napping sessions. She'd made the mistake once of trying to steal what she'd thought was a precious diamond ring once worn by Queen Elizabeth II herself only to be forced through the eerie gauntlet that was Hans's bedroom for a cheap plastic replica. The man really did sleep in a lair. She learned more about Hans Weiberman than was necessary, and as a result she always marvelled at how his skin was a rosy hue due to the large amounts of fake blood he consumed as an energy drink every morning and evening. A beet juice and cherry puree vampire. He insisted it was better than eating candy bars for his sweet fix, but Mycroft doubted it could beat out chocolate.

She turned on her elegant heel back to her home, her steps clicking along the pavement in time with the dog's steps, a lovely sync between them that cemented the borzoi's trust in her. They both carefully made their way up the front steps like a queen with her loyal lady in waiting by her side, a false impression of noble fragility following them. A large yellow manila envelope was waiting for her in the mailbox and Mycroft found this curious since the postman hadn't come around yet, and she tucked it under her arm as she and the dog made their way back into the house.

Sherlock and John were absent indoors, but she could hear Sherlock chatting with Lord Grayson, clouds of smoke billowing between the three of them. She needed to get him to do something more productive than spin conspiracy theories with the local gentry who thought roughing it in conversation with Sherlock on her back porch was some measure of being 'street'. She rolled her eyes at the folly of the rich and bid the borzoi Catherine to return to her favourite spot on the red velvet couch in her living room. The borzoi curled over it with long deer's legs until she compressed herself into an impossible circle, her head tucked beneath her slender tail like a coiled cat.

Mycroft was about to open the manila envelope when the telephone in the front foyer rang, and she tossed it instead into the brown bowl where the house keys and stray bits and pieces of life tended to go. Grace's work tag, for one, and she'd forgotten it this morning. Mycroft sighed, it was a good thing the woman was easy to spot and recognize, though the front desk security clerk was getting damned tired of giving her a temporary pass so she could get into the Yard. The manila envelope squatted on top of it and the house keys, obscuring both from view.

She answered the phone, a baroque monstrosity of fake ivory and carved pewter from the 1960's that fit the theme of her decor quite well and was placed on a tall pedestal. It was the only standard telephone in the house, a piece of furniture that was quickly becoming obsolete in place of cell phones. For Mycroft it served a work purpose, for only those whom she was interested in robbing ever got the number to her land line.

"Good morning," she said into it.

"Good morning, Miss Holmes! Such a delight to hear your voice again!"

The nasal intonation of Arthur Billingsworth III slid into her ear like snot, and she fought the urge to grab a tissue and wipe off the mouthpiece. The man's bad breath couldn't transfer through a phone line, of course, it was her miserable imagination making that happen. But she did automatically clench her buttocks and press against the wall to avoid a handsy introduction that was likewise impossible. "Arthur! How good to hear from you. How is the family?"

She could care less, actually. and she had to fight to remember him in human terms and not in the difficulty of acquiring the blue diamond ring, which amounted to a four on a scale of one to ten in complexity of plan. Arthur Billingsworth III. Ah, yes, that unfortunate incident with the bees and that pleasantly nasty vicar who swelled up like a pufferfish and only slightly deflated when Mycroft poked his thigh with an EpiPen. Bad luck, that.

"Sally and the baby are doing quite well," Arthur proudly replied and it took a few moments for Mycroft to remember the bride had been heavily pregnant at the time, all that flouncing taffeta had hidden it well. "Bouncing baby boy, a proper heir as my wife would say. We're pleased as punch all around!"

Mycroft fought the urge to sigh at the expression, for what on Earth was pleasurable about a punch? But though she grimaced, she was sure her pleasantry was saccharine enough. "How lovely! I'm sure he's a beautiful child, does he have a name?"

"Arthur Billingsworth IV."

"How very original," Mycroft deadpanned. "But shouldn't he be taking his father's name?"

"Oh gracious no, Kevin is clearly not the father of the baby and Sally can't remember between one fellow and the next so we're waiting on the DNA results between a car salesman in Chelsea and a drug dealer in Hackney. I do hope it's the latter, actually, he seemed more of an astute young man when it comes to business sense." Arthur clucked his disapproval. "Very different than from in my day, that's for sure. Such a thing would have been scandalous in my youth, but now it's all instant acceptance and celebrity spots with television psychologists. We're going on that Dr. Phyllis Snoddy show next week, 'Snoddy's Snods' on BBC-4."

Mycroft couldn't stop the automatic, polite strained smile at this, the utter absurdity of the man's life invading her more practical space. "How very interesting, Arthur. Is there another reason for your call?"

"Yes, actually, I'm glad you reminded me! We are having a formal black tie affair to commemorate the baby's arrival, a sort of Welcome to the Family thing with all sorts of charity funds going towards drug addled youth, a kind of giving back to the community that we suspect spawned him. Sally is staying mum on the whole thing, of course, and has shown no inkling to join us and has given us a formal letter informing us how she has officially disowned both my wife and I as her family, but there are expectations in our social circles, as you know. Certainly after the whole bee incident it would be nice to have a soiree where an ambulance wasn't in attendance."

"I imagine so," Mycroft said, feigning disinterest. "But I will have to check my calendar and get back to you."

"I do hope you can come, there are all sorts invited, not the least of which is the Duchess of Mann, who as you know has the most exquisite taste in small dogs. She's arriving with a hairless Japanese crested, whatever that is. Ugly thing and draws blood like a razor when it bites."

Mycroft interest was instantly on high alert, for there were few purchases that the Duchess of Mann made that Mycroft wasn't keenly aware of. The overstuffed elderly woman, often draped in expensive silks that wrapped around her massive frame, was not only fond of strange, small, vicious dogs but unique jewellery items as well. Her latest acquisition was a blue diamond necklace not worth quite as much as the ring Billingsworth had so carelessly hidden away, but was close in currency at three hundred and fifty million pounds.

"I know it's rather short notice," Arthur droned on. "But seeing as how unreasonable Sally is being we figured getting this out of the way as quickly as possible was necessary. Can we expect you to attend?"

"I wouldn't miss it," Mycroft assured him. "Consider this a verbal RSVP.'

"Yes, but you will RSVP in letter form as well, you know how much of a stickler my wife is for such details."

"I will. In fact, I think I have your invitation here already, Arthur. Thank you, I look forward to returning to Georgia House." She made a concentrated effort not to say 'to return to the scene of the crime' but even with this large hint she doubted the man was astute enough to get it.

She ripped open the end of the manila envelope as Arthur Billingsworth III said his protracted good-byes. "You shall be a lovely addition to our party. And bring a plus one, if you have one. He is more than welcome."

"I shall. Good-bye, Arthur."

"Do answer Dear Madame immediately." His use of her nickname and the casual way he tossed it towards Mycroft was a clear sign she was in full control freak force. Mycroft instantly felt empathy for her servants. "She is in a big tizzy over the lack of adequate time for planning, I mean, only a week! She's on medication to help with her anxiety."

A medicated Dear Madame was one Mycroft was more than happy to deal with. "I look forward to seeing you and yours, Arthur."

She hung up the phone as she pulled the eight by ten sheet of paper out from the manila envelope. The envelope fluttered to the floor as she studied the note, her mouth hanging open in a horrified gasp as she read the neatly typed script in the centre of the page:

**We are aware of your magpie habits, Blue Danube. Tell your good friend Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade that we are not happy with the way her investigation keeps leaning towards us. We aren't to blame for misinformed business practices. We rather like it when people stay dead and we aren't in the habit of recycling. This is your only warning. Call off your pretty dogs.

CC**

~*~

Leaving the Yard after only showing up there for an hour wasn't exactly earning Grace any kind words from Powell, who made a point to make a formal complaint about her sudden absenteeism to Chief Wilcox. Wilcox gave an understanding shrug at her departure, while Powell continued to plead his case that she was being tardy and not committed to the stacks of murders still sitting on her desk, arguments that Grace wasn't going to justify with the biting retort that was eating away her insides. Calling Powell a weasel faced little cunt wasn't exactly a professional criticism but the longing to put such words on the record for all to see was a powerful one, even though it would give him ammunition against her.

Politics stubbornly pushed aside, Grace's new problem was now calling her on her cell phone and with a push of the button on the dashboard Mycroft's frantic voice flooded the small, grey BMW. "They are after me! Dear God, how can they wait that long and then just suddenly decide to spring like this, they are the most patient monsters I have ever had the displeasure to run into and I have made *every* effort to avoid them! Shouldn't there be police detail on Sherlock and John, they've wronged these bastards in the past, they'll think nothing of harming both of them and with this new...This new blatant threat at me suggests they are more than happy to put me in line at that bloodied chopping block and watch the head of every Holmes roll!"

The traffic along the Mall was monstrous. Bumper to bumper, no one moving an inch, and every pedestrian was a curious rubberneck, seeking out the carnage of the traffic accident two block ahead. Huffing in frustration, Grace turned her attention back to Mycroft. "Send me a pic of this nasty note."

"You are diminishing a serious danger! There were threats made against my person!"

Grace could sense that Mycroft was starting to spiral off into a rather familiar hysteria, one that she had first witnessed all those years ago when Ulstead had been assassinated and several times since, usually when dinner reservations had to be cancelled. How two such unrelated stressful events could create the same reaction was a psychology paper that hadn't been written yet. "Just send the damned pic."

Reading while driving was a special kind of illegal, but Grace's car was now wedged into a standstill, and no amount of honking assholes around her were going to make this gridlock move any faster. She wondered how many people avoided getting murdered thanks to traffic jams. Successful murder tended to rely on good timing.

She read the note over carefully, twice, and then shut off her phone. "Right. Stop worrying. There is no threat in that note and if there's one thing I'm aware of with the Crown Cartel it's that they don't leave room for metaphoric interpretation. They want me to know that they don't like their association with my current case, and have actually snuck in some info for me as a result. As for the threat against you, that's not against your life, it's about exposure and it's all suggestive, though I don't think I'll be putting that note in evidence, you know how much Powell gets the wrong stink on things. He'll be arresting me for being the Blue Danube, not you."

"You can't be flippant about this!" Mycroft's voice was shrill as it echoed throughout the confines of Grace's BMW, her panic increasing with every second. The best thing to do would be to not engage her in conversation at all. Too late now. "My reputation IS my LIFE, Grace! How can you not understand that!"

"I'll deal with it," Grace promised her. The traffic began to finally move and she felt a sense of calm descend over her as the flow of rubber wheels and heavy engines returned to a normal rhythm. "I'll stop off and get some nice flowers at that fancy little flower place you like, Harrow's Roots. I'll be at your place soon. Manny is still coming tonight, she should be at the house around seven. She texted me this morning and said she's thinking of bringing a plus one."

The icy silence at the other end of the line gave Grace pause.

"No."

"Don't be like that, Mycroft, you know she hasn't had a real date in years. I doubt this is one, either."

"I'm tired of being her out. Manny cannot be trusted to pick up a healthy goldfish let alone another human being. The answer is no."

"Too late. She's bringing him. Some accountant for a paper company, I think, seems like a nice enough guy." Grace inwardly cringed. Manny bringing him to dinner always meant an ulterior motive.

"We need to cancel. I am far too agitated to continue on with dinner, I can't wrap my mind around the fact that my life is now fraught with attempts upon it and the ever watchful eye of evil, monstrous elements who would not hesitate to erase me!"

"That's not going to happen, Mycroft, that's not their style."

"I know damned well what their style is, Grace! I like having hands and a head attached, thank you!!"

The dashboard speaker was suddenly silent and the panel informed Grace that Mycroft Holmes had ended her call. A furious hang up. Great. The flowers were going to have to be a big bunch of roses now, and she'd still complain they weren't appropriate for the season all the while secretly loving them.

One could hope, anyway.

The image of the note had told Grace far more than what the words had, and the puzzle of the strange code was almost, but not quite, clear to her. In bottom right hand corner, as in the threats sent to Sherlock, the code GHOST-11 was clearly marked in blue ink. In the top right corner there was an additional code: GHOST-08.

The suggestion was that the two codes overlapped, but Grace still wasn't sure how. All any of it seemed to prove was that the Crown Cartel had their share of obsessive compulsive cryptographers who could make the simplest note a complex denial of involvement. She couldn't blame them, really. The Ghost would hardly want to be a party to necrophilia, no matter how lucrative the business. It seems even drug cartels have limits.

Work, however, was still the order of the day and Grace wasn't about to let Mycroft's panic hinder her plans for the investigation. She speed dialled Officer LiPing Xao's number and waited for the woman's clipped English to course like tin through her dashboard's speakers.

"Scotland Yard is going to be very angry over your roaming charges, Detective Inspector Lestrade. How can I help you?"

"Buyer's remorse," Grace said.

There was a slight pause. "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"It's an English phrase that means you bought something thinking you wanted it only to discover it's not what you wanted at all and in fact it's so wrong it's beginning to ruin your life. Do you understand what I mean?"

"I think so. Like buying a cheap couch and finding out it doesn't match your apartment and it takes up way too much space."

"Speaking from experience?"

"In China, condos are the size of a London kitchen. This thing is now my bed, desk, dining table and bookcase all in one. No room to stretch my legs, always bumping my toes on the fake plastic camphor feet. Looked nice in the shop with the gold lighting and in my home it just looks like a dirty orange piece of crap." Her voice was muffled and Grace waited while Officer Xao shouted in Mandarin at her junior officer, who suddenly knew enough English to unwisely add his opinion on the matter. Xao returned to the phone with a long suffering sigh. "It is a big joke around here, that stupid couch."

"I'm thinking that's an apt metaphor at present for the Crown Cartel and this case. I can't flat out divulge my sources, but I can tell you that it's become clear they are wanting to distance themselves as much as possible from any involvement. Is there any possibility that Anastasia and Boris had been operating this niche market of theirs on the down low? Maybe even going so far as to sell it for something it wasn't, like an easy way to smuggle drugs until it became clear you can't transport hundreds of human bodies that easily and plastinated ones tend to not be hollowed out enough for large amounts of heroin?"

"They would need backup funds and lots of insiders who they paid off. That sort of help is cheap from the body factory but not so much once they get to the museum curators." Grace could hear Xao's pen tapping against the surface of her desk, the metallic ring it set off indicating it was made of steel. She wasn't sure why that seemed significant, but the idea of Xao surrounded by sturdy metal in every aspect of her life felt apt. It made the idea of her owning a tacky carved orange and camphor wood sofa sound hilarious even to a person who'd never met the woman in her natural habitat. "I think I have a good idea why that family ended up on the docks."

Grace braced herself. "I'm all ears."

"The facts are obvious. They weren't plastinated and the workers at the body factory aren't used to traditional western embalming techniques."

"So what you're saying is...?"

"They were too ripe for use. Like spoiled fruit sent on a delayed shipment. I suggest you look for plastinated bodies shipped around the time the corpses were discovered, I can guarantee at least one person will have more weight than normal on their shipment order, one that had suffered a delay."

"I just don't get it. Why would someone want bodies shipped out from a plastination factory like that only to order them imperfectly embalmed?"

"Ignorance, on both sides. Your sick loser wanted softness, not hard limbs and hinges weren't going to work for him. But he didn't understand that you can't permanently embalm someone, that softness comes at a price, especially when it's not done right."

Grace sucked in her bottom lip, thinking on it and feeling kind of sick. "I guess the proper embalming procedure would have happened here if they'd arrived on time. Manny, our specialist, came to the same conclusion you did. They were only partially preserved."

Xao grunted her assertion. "You know what, Inspector? This case is making me lose weight. The more I talk to you, the less I want to eat my lunch."

"My spouse is vegan. That should make it easier, but talking about how much better organic is has started making me queasy."

"We both know that's what those bodies you found were supposed to be aiming for."

"You've just wrecked dinner for me for the next month or so."

"The pounds just slide off, Inspector, it's like magic."

"Yeah. 'Ta for that."

She rang off with Xao with a promise to let her know if anything further showed up after she dove into the body shipments to local universities and museums. She wasn't sure what the influx of that kind of freak show was on average, but Xao had been kind enough to send her base weights for certain heights and ages of individuals. Four extra bodies with their soft tissues intact would weigh a lot more than a few desiccated people devoid of fat, water and muscle.

Her cell phone slid across the rounded curve of plastic beneath the windshield until it was wedged in the far left corner. It was buzzing again, and the dashboard warned Grace that Mycroft was trying to get a hold of her. She didn't answer it, content instead to keep the phone and its strange note in limbo as she made her way out of the Piccadilly roundabout and off towards the streets that led to Belgravia. Screw the flowers. They reminded her funerals anyway.

~*~

"None of you have any understanding of how difficult this is!" Mycroft slammed a few pots and pans on the surface of her stove and shook off Grace's attempts to placate her with a massage of her wide shoulders. "To recreate puff pastry using only vegan margarine and flour, frozen but not too much, that is a fine art that not even the best patisserie has perfected and yet I am expected to create a miracle!"

"And you always do," Grace reminded her, but Mycroft was not to be daunted in her quest for personal drama. She had spent the better part of the last hour fussing over the mushroom Wellington and fretting over the lack of yield in the flaky pastry the portabellos were wrapped in. The kitchen was a disaster zone, Mycroft's usual controlled precision now given way to her inner chaos that was spilling out into her environment, a common symptom when she was severely stressed.

Grace noted that dinner was pretty much prepped and all that had to be done was tidy up the remains of war. She began slowly recapping bottles of soya sauce and vegan mayo, oils and vinegars wiped down and placed back on the shelf above the sink. Mycroft's myriad spices were also slowly packed away, spilled remnants neatly wiped clean. Catherine the Great nosed Grace, looking for a treat as she mistook the mushrooms for little shards of steak and was sorely disappointed when Grace obliged. The borzoi spat out the mushroom with an audible 'ptoo'.

Grace tossed the wet rag she'd used to clean up the counter back into the sink and braced herself on the heels of her palm against the kitchen island. Mycroft was still fussing over a beet salad.

"They aren't coming after you. That message is more for me than it is for you, Mycroft, deep down you know this is true. The Crown Cartel is telling me that they aren't happy to be involved with my current investigation."

Mycroft chopped a carrot with angry vigour. "I really don't understand your complacency, Grace. That was my name on that note, and the threat of revelation is against me alone. Why would the Crown Cartel do such a thing?"

"Because that way they know I can't use that note in evidence without exposing you. Rather clever, actually."

"I'm glad to hear you believe my imminent danger is 'clever'."

Grace grabbed her by the shoulders and hated the way Mycroft stiffened beneath her touch. She pressed her lips against Mycroft's ear and breathed deep against it. "Stop."

Mycroft closed her eyes and took a deep breath, centring herself. "Sherlock and John will be in attendance tonight, as per usual. What time is Manny expected to arrive? Seven o'clock, isn't it?"

"On the dot. You know Manny."

Mycroft sighed. "Yes, I do. Will she be sober when she arrives this time?"

"She's not usually blotto until nine, so one can hope she doesn't get an early start. It all depends on how her date goes. Do you have the handy mop ready?"

"She's a loud, sloppy drunk," Mycroft complained. "I have one of the guest rooms ready for her, and I'm leaving it up to you to ensure her car keys are secreted away the second she arrives."

"Will do."

The rest of the day continued in quiet preparation, the dining room that was tucked in behind the kitchen with its wall of floor to ceiling glass bathed in the sepia glow of golden light fixtures and a tasteful arrangement of grey driftwood and pillar candles. The room looked like it had been plucked from a formal catering masterpiece, complete with stacked white dishes and a tasteful sprig of thyme placed across the expanse of plates. Gold and driftwood were the central theme, and the setting reminded Grace of a summer beach on a bleached Mediterranean shore.

By the time seven o'clock rolled around Sherlock and John had already parked themselves in the living room and the backyard with Lord Grayson respectively, their inadvertent skunky cologne following them everywhere they went. The two men were strictly forbidden to go into the dining room out of fear that Sherlock would mess with the decor. Grace well remembered the Christmas fiasco when Sherlock and John had raided the dining room two hours before dinner was to be served and depleted the table of its fruits, leaving pomegranate rinds and smudged red fingerprints all over the sparkling starched white tablecloth and on the rims of the white plates. Mycroft didn't bother with fruit bowls as decoration after that.

Seven o'clock came and went. Manny was late. By 8:30, Mycroft was ready to pack it all in and refuse all future invites to the tardy coroner, only for the front doorbell to ring and John, in his innocence, answered it.

"Oh, look! It's my little Johnny Puppy!" Manny staggered into the front foyer and draped herself over a very shocked John who silently suffered her obviously drunken affection. Grace glanced over Manny's shoulder, wondering if she'd driven there drunk, only to be met by a tall, gangly man with pasty skin who bowed to her in embarrassment, his thin smile strained as though he was in pain.

"I'm starving!" Manny announced, tossing her coat on the floor as she wobbled on her heels and headed for the dining room. "Where's the grub? Oh, right, this is Richard, he's an accountant for St. Mary's, works on the seventh floor away from all the sickies. Sorry we're late but we got BUSY if you can guess what I mean! Come on, Richard, in the dining room, don't be standing there like a damned spider plant in the front hall! Oh, a new dog! Hello doggie! Aren't you something? You look like a movie star, got any tips on how I can find a way to bang Tom Hardy?"

"There's a strange smell in here," a very uncertain Richard said to Grace as he passed her. "Is that...Is it marijuana?"

He didn't get his answer and was instead snatched up by Manny who practically dragged him into the dining room, leaving Grace to deal with a smouldering Mycroft who was giving furious glares to the clock and to the extra set of dishes she was going to be forced to put in place at the dining table. "Remind me again why we invite her. This happens *every* time!"

Grace shrugged. "Then it's not exactly a surprise, is it?"

Mycroft was murderous. "You dare to mock my concern! I made exactly enough for five people and I have no idea what that man's preferences are!"

"Boozy women who smell like morgues, apparently. Just add some lettuce to the salad and cut smaller portions of the mushroom Wellington, you always have leftovers anyway."

Mycroft gathered up the extra place setting with far more clatter than was necessary. Grace hung by the front door with longing, wishing it could be a logical avenue for escape. She wasn't going to hear the end of this, Mycroft would be complaining about Manny's behaviour the entire night and though the accountant seemed like a nice enough fellow, he'd be needing PTSD counselling before the first course was served. No one wandered into Mycroft's dinner party late and without a formal invitation. No. One.

Bracing herself and smoothing down the crisp cotton shirt she'd actually ironed and ensuring her navy trousers were free of lint, Grace gave her short, spiked blonde hair a quick once over and a fluff up before heading into the dining room and her doom. Catherine the Great trotted behind her apprehensively, her tiny paws clicking on the black and white tiles like miniature deer hooves. They walked past the kitchen and Grace turned to the dog, raising her brow at Catherine's curiosity. The dog tilted her long, aquiline head and then, in unspoken understanding, turned around and trotted back to her favourite spot on the couch in the living room.

Though it was an hour and a half late, the food was still steaming, a trick of catering that Mycroft had learned over the years when dealing with the upper crust of society, where chefs par cooked the food until the guests arrived and it was finished just before service. Richard remarked on the beautiful detail given to the dining room and the place setting, only for Mycroft to remind him that it *was* perfect until Manny had been unkind enough to bring an uninvited guest, but one must press on.

Mycroft's diet was one formed from both empathy and practicality, for she hadn't always been a wealthy thief and despite her mother's title that particular stream of old money had left the Holmes fortune long ago. In her early twenties Mycroft subsisted on oatmeal, legumes and rice while she tried to eke out a living as a rather poorly trained stenographer for a paper company. She never talked of this past, but Grace had a good understanding of it thanks to Sherlock, who had been trapped at home with the matriarch Victoria Holmes for several years after Mycroft had made her escape. "It really was a prison break, you know," Sherlock had confided to Grace one cold winter's night. "We were both trapped on that moldy estate with our mother, Mrs. Haversham, and all of Dickens' trappings. There are enough cobwebs in that place to make a vampire jealous. We could no longer afford servants, you see, and my mother has no concept of how cleanliness actually works. You have to wipe things down on occasion with a damp rag, a philosophy well beyond her. But what she did know was the importance of a good marriage, and damned if poor Mycroft didn't end up her near prostituted meal ticket, and no, I'm not exaggerating or being gross, our mother had no limits when it came to getting pound notes out of those with a 'good name'. Mycroft managed to keep her virginity intact against the wishes of our mother, who wanted her to screw a fifty-seven year old Lord Whatshisname when she was only sixteen. Mother thought the potential scandal would trap him into giving them a monthly stipend. Mycroft ran away instead, for the fifth time in several years. She left the house for good when she was eighteen, and slept rough in the tube for a few weeks before she managed to con herself into a secretarial job. It paid near nothing and she was starving, but she took it because they offered free passes to the London Museum next door. She used to hide in a closet when it was closing and slept inside the display cases. The night guard never saw her, she blended into the baroque pomp of the eighteenth century dioramas like a bored statue."

"Mannequins."

Grace shook her head, clearing it of images of Mycroft decked out like an overdone Marie Antoinette, a version which was most definitely keeping her head. She glanced up at the curious looks that were collected at the dining table at her, the meal now beautifully plated and delivered without Grace even having noticed. She picked up her glass of white wine and took a deep sip before raising her brows in mock acknowledgement. "Yes."

"That's what they are."

It was Manny talking, and Grace frowned, certain that there was something wrong in the eager way she approached the subject, her fork dripping with mushroom gravy and boiled beets. "This has to be the weirdest case yet, and I'm still at a loss as to why they were found at the Docks laid out like that. I took a good look over my notes and the bodies again and I have to say, they were just as you suspected, a tad ripe for use. Didn't find any evidence of necrophilia, though, which was disappointing, because that's the more obvious reason for them. It certainly is for those other poor dolls we haven't found yet."

Grace's fork hit her plate but Manny was unmoved, shovelling in large leaves of salad and moaning in pleasure over the beets. "The Welly is a triumph as always, Mycroft. Tastes more beefy than my last boyfriend and he was a body builder. Now Richard, here, he's more like chicken. White meat, stringy, prone to being flavourless." Manny helped herself to more salad, ensuring she picked up some extra olives along the way. The gangly accountant Richard stared at his plate as though he wished it could swallow him into it. John and Sherlock sat across from one another and Grace noted that John was sneaking tofu cubes beneath the rim of his plate to give to the dog as a treat later. Sherlock was fiddling with the baggie of high quality THC in his inside jacket pocket. Mycroft finished half of her glass of wine and then topped it up, pointedly ignoring both Grace and Manny though her simmering fury was obvious.

"This really isn't the time to talk about that," Grace reminded Manny.

But Manny didn't partake of those sorts of social graces and was as earthy and comfortable with worms as those who found themselves on her basement slabs. "I think it isn't a pervert thing at all, that the guy who bought this family of corpses was all about getting a back up plan. He's probably not happy with the family he already has, so he bought himself a better one. They're quiet, you can pose them any old way you like and they're soft and malleable, at least that's how the sales pitch probably went."

Grace pushed her food around on her plate. "So you're thinking this is about having a family he can control?"

"Bingo. The perfect arrangement, like a bouquet of flowers only it's mum, dad, boy and girl fermenting in the basement instead of azaleas."

"I don't understand why he wouldn't plastinate them," Grace continued, much to Mycroft's dismay. "I mean, you'd think he'd want that permanence if he's going through this kind of trouble."

"He likes them softer," Manny offered around a mouthful of mushroom Wellington.

Grace frowned. "That tells us about his experience with his real family. That they are hard and unbendable. That's why he demanded his custom order, but he doesn't have enough knowledge about mortuary practices to know they'd rot."

Richard's chair scraped against the floor as he pushed away from the table. "Right, that's enough. I'm getting a taxi." His limbs were everywhere as he tried to gracefully ease himself out of the cramped sitting space, his sharp elbows coming dangerously close to knocking over his glass of white wine. Manny offered him half-hearted protests, only to look relieved when he finally managed to get out of his seat and escape the dining room, his profuse apologies to Mycroft and company echoing across the kitchen as she accompanied him to the front door.

He hadn't even finished his salad.

When Mycroft returned it was to a far more sober Manny. "Sorry about that," Manny said to her, pushing away her wine glass. "He insisted on a date night out and I gave him a chance, but oh my God, there's only so much a person can take. He spent most of the time in the comic book store in Chelsea and that's why we were late. He was holding out for a bargain on a Tales Of The Unexpected from 1977 with a ripped corner. He wouldn't leave the place. I could care less about Spiderman and what the hell is Magic the Gathering?" She gave Mycroft's continued glare a sigh of defeat. "No excuses, I should have called you. But he wouldn't shut up and he wouldn't leave me alone for a second. One of those overly detailed about everything types."

Mycroft sighed and closed her eyes as she sat back down at her seat at the head of the table, the salad passed back to Manny. "You did an excellent job of wrecking any future attempts for him to get in your pants."

Manny instantly brightened at this. "Thank you."

Sherlock remained unimpressed. "It's revolting the way you use us as filters for your pathetic paramours. Really, Manny, there is no reason for anyone to be dredging up the bottom feeders of Tinder when they can call on you to find plenty of them face to face."

Manny ignored his criticism and instead enjoyed another mouthful of the Wellington. "A triumph, as always, Mycroft. And the gravy is perfect."

"Of course it is," Mycroft coldly proclaimed and took a long sip of her wine.

The remainder of the dinner went by without a mention of corpses and by the time midnight rolled around Grace felt a decided relief that the dead hadn't chanced to visit them. Well stuffed and full of a healthy dessert of figs and coconut cream, they had all retired to the living room, with Manny draped in a winged chair by the cold fire and Grace hugging Catherine the Great on the sofa. Mycroft was still busy, her heels clicking through the kitchen as she fussed over an arrangement of dirty dishes, outright refusing anyone's help save for John's. "John knows exactly how I like things done," she explained, but it was more a chance to make the poor man feel special and appreciated, a simple job that made him feel useful. Living with Sherlock's poverty stricken filth and sloth was hardly conducive to motivation.

Midnight rolled in, the chime from the ornately carved beige baroque grandfather clock in the front foyer announcing the witching hour with soft chimes. Grace's cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and it was quiet enough in the living room for everyone to hear it. Sherlock poked his head back into the house from the back porch, a question on his brow, while John and Mycroft stood silent as sentries in the kitchen, John with a dripping soapy dish in one hand and a drying towel in the other. Manny raised a confused brow, looking far more tired than hung over.

"Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade." She closed her eyes at the exhaustion the words on the other end of the line delivered and by the time she hung up her phone, Manny was already on her feet, snatching up her shoes, purse and coat, ready once again for work.

"We can't even enjoy a nice night in anymore," Mycroft lamented as Grace slid on her black jacket. There was a damp chill in the evening air, and though it was summer Grace felt every mossy imprint of the mist on her bones. "The Crown Cartel is at it again."

Grace nodded. Manny listened in, attentive, as she knew she would. "Anastasia and Boris have been found in a basement warehouse room at the Docks. They'd been hiding out there. Head and hands missing, but Chief Wilcox sent me pics of the scene, there's no mistaking it's them. A tattoo on Boris's arm matches one from his description and Anastasia is wearing the same outfit as in one of her arrest photos from Russia. This wasn't about hiding the identity of the bodies, it was to send a message that bad business ideas have severe consequences." Grace felt as tired as the dead herself and longed to stay in her comfortable home, even if Sherlock and John were going to be parked in it, the night too old and the two of them too lacking in sense and energy to make it back to their decrepit housing flat. "Wilcox has warned me that Powell doesn't want me there and he's made a specific request that I don't get the call. Which naturally means I have to be there. You up for a fist fight, Manny? Might have to do a bit of wrestling to get past that bastard. He has the mistaken belief those headless wonders are all his."

 

 

 


	7. hustlers and heroin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft has some unpleasant memories thanks to a phone call from her mother. Grace gets a huge break in the case.
> 
> WARNING: Mycroft's past can have triggers for those who have suffered sexual abuse. Nothing graphic, and I don't usually put trigger warnings (thus the 'creator chose not use warnings' selection), but here it is just in case.

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter seven

Mycroft has a lot of pet peeves. Grace owns one of them, which Mycroft was faced with when she awoke that morning, the glare from the bedside lamp shining bright into her eyes. An early riser is one thing, but the woman had to make sure that every light in the room was blazing in nuclear fury the second her alarm went off. For a person who routinely operated on less than three hours sleep a night, this kind of artificial sun chasing perplexed Mycroft. She rolled onto her side and turned off the bedside lamp. The glowing beacon above, however, would require her to actually leave her comfortable bed, and thus burying her face into her pillow in stubborn slumber would have to do.

Pet peeve number two was a telephone call at precisely eight o'clock in the morning. If she could count on the fact that it was five minutes before or after, Mycroft wouldn't feel the same amount of annoyance the incessant, tinny ringing was hammering at her now for she could be confident the person on the other end would be content with leaving a message. But not this caller. Not at this precise time, with a military precision that would impress a general. having one's slumber disturbed by an unwanted call. Mycroft groaned in spiritual agony and she rolled onto her back, the glaring bedroom light boring holes against her retinas, mocking her. The thick, Egyptian cotton sheets were tucked tight around her despite the heat in the room, the morning sunlight streaming in through a thin window on the opposite wall, adding to the incessant brilliance.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

She knew who it was. Only one person in this world could morph a simple phone call into a beckon from Hell. Mycroft blindly slid her hand along the nightstand by her side of the bed and pulled the plastic land line into the bed with her, the old fashioned phone pressed against her ear, her voice muffled thanks to the soft down of the pillow that billowed around her exhausted face.

"Hello, Mother."

"I didn't even say it was me! How did you know?"

"Trust me, I always know. The phone has a nagging ring."

"That's impossible, there aren't special rings, it just rings. You're hardly a psychic, Mycroft, if you were you would have known that horse would have been a much bigger winner than he ended up being. But there's no point worrying over those little details now, not with the charity ball happening at Georgia House! It's all so exciting! The very idea makes me think of my early days when I first met your father!"

It was too bright and too early to be feeling this sort of growing horror, and Mycroft blinked into the daylight, her mother's voice turning her off the thought of breakfast. "It's a charity function, Mother, hardly a ball." She sat up, increasingly alarmed. "Who told you about it? It's by invite only and I doubt very much you got a little embossed card in the mail."

"You really are a miserable child," her mother spat. "I'll have you know that Arthur Billingsworth III called me up himself and insisted I come. In case you don't remember, I am the Dowager Duchess and as such I still have certain social obligations that must be filled, and Sir Arthur has been kind enough to remind me that I haven't been in attendance for one of these special soirees for quite some time." She tittered and the falsetto of it made Mycroft's skin crawl. "He's a lovely man, he well remembered all those events we used to hold here at the estate. You were too young at the time to know about those, they were in my early married years when I was still young and flirty. Sherlock hadn't been born yet." She sighed and Mycroft wanted to take that as her cue to hang up. "Odd how time catches up with us and our vanity along with it. I was such a pretty, slight little thing. I haven't seen Sir Arthur in near thirty years, and the only thing I vaguely remember about him is that he has terrible halitosis, I do hope he's remedied that."

He hadn't, of course, but Mycroft wasn't about to expand on the gossip her mother so craved and instead she formulated complex reasons as to why her mother shouldn't go. Number one on the list was that she was an old, snobbish hag who had nothing at all to contribute to anyone save misery and she'd become besties with Dear Madame within an hour of meeting her. Mycroft wanted no association and as far as she knew Billingsworth hadn't been tipped off. Despite her age, Victoria Holmes's vanity took precedence and she rarely talked of her children to potential future suitors for herself, and even now at her advanced age she was still eager to be a wealthy man's mistress.

"Billingsworth is married to a very unpleasant woman who also happens to have all the money," Mycroft said as a way of warning her mother off. "Besides, they are a family embroiled in scandal what with the odd criminal commoner lineage of their grandson."

"Yes, that does make it all rather cheap in my opinion." Victoria audibly yawned. "Disappointing that Arthur has no pocket of his own. An unpleasant wife is an unhappy one, Mycroft, perhaps you could use your skewered eroticism on her instead? A much better prospect than that scruffy little detective you've latched onto."

As usual, Victoria really knew how to hit a sore nerve. She'd never accepted Grace nor an opportunity to harshly judge Mycroft's relationship with her. "On the contrary, Detective Inspector Grace Lestrade is welcome in all manner of social engagement and as such has the honour of being my plus one."

Her mother rudely snorted at this. "How very typical of you, Mycroft, seeing an opportunity and refusing to alight upon it. You needn't work so hard if you found a proper man to take care of you."

"You were just encouraging me to have an affair with his vile wife."

"I am trying to be understanding, Mycroft, and yet here you are, as always, twisting my words and making me seem like some vacuous matriarch who hasn't a clue about how the world works..."

"That's pretty much it, yes," Mycroft agreed.

"You could have had so much more, Mycroft," her mother sighed. "If only you had the right ambition."

The old argument was dying to come to the fore but Mycroft held back, refusing to give in to her mother's whining, narcissistic need to reduce her. It would be so easy to say 'By ambition, you mean turning myself out like a whore and letting old men paw me for money' but the recriminations and bad memories would force their way in and leave Mycroft a shaking mess of tears and her mother triumphant that she had toppled her daughter from whatever imaginary pedestal she believed her to be on.

"I understand you were seen at the tracks again this week," Mycroft said, the statement a tired one. "Sherlock told me, and don't you dare call him to tell him off for tattling. I've warned the bookies not to lend to you and that if they do they will not be paid. I'm done with this, mother. If you can't curb your habits you're going to have to suffer the consequences of them."

Her mother huffed on the other end of the line. "Mycroft, dear, I don't have a thing to wear to the ball, and you know how much the Princess of Ethiopia is such a fashion hog, if I show up in last year's rags I'll be a laughingstock!"

"I doubt very much that noble woman cares, Mother. Suffer it, then. It's your fault for making sure you were nothing more in life than a clothes hanger."

There was a choked, muffled curse on the other end of the line and Mycroft smirked at how easy it was to dive under the shallow veneer of her mother and force the barbed demon within to come to the fore. "Insufferable wretch! You've always been a disappointment, Mycroft. Both you and Sherlock. You are both selfish, ignoring the needs of your mother and live your lives in poverty stricken shambles, all thanks to your own inability to function..."

Mycroft rolled her eyes, used to this constant refrain. Her mother knew damned well her only daughter had lots of money, these phone calls usually preceded a request for debt payments, and Sherlock rarely got a call save to have him nag Mycroft into giving her funds. For Sherlock, poverty was like an oath. Riches had done nothing for him when he grew up with them, their father distant and annoyed by his young son and his aloof daughter, Sherlock often taking the brunt of his judgement against his son's lack of ambition. But Sherlock had well noted it, the way his father's life revolved around the constant worry of money and its acquisition, that no matter how fat his bank account became it was never enough to fill the void of feeling that permeated their lives under that too large roof.

When Harold Holmes left Victoria Holmes when Mycroft was ten, trading his wife in for the younger frivolity of his pretty secretary, their finances quickly spiralled into ruin. Their mother understood nothing of money, and had been fond of horse races even then. When she still had her looks, Victoria Holmes took on streams of wealthy lovers, a prostitution she wouldn't admit, and when they tired of giving her endless 'gifts' that became a burden rather than a distraction Victoria Holmes was quite keen to have her daughter take on the role of pampered mistress.

How young was she, really, when that began?

As her mother prattled on about the importance of decorum and Mycroft's decided lack, a distant memory of herself in her room, playing with dolls suddenly rose to the forefront of her mind. She had a Scooby-Doo van, a present from her father for her birthday.

Thelma was in the driver's seat.

She remembered her bedroom door opening and a tall man in a slim, black suit standing above her, looking down, his hands in his pockets, jangling change.

But the memory was off, the feeling he gave her more threat than simple curiosity. His hands in his pockets. Her mother's voice from the kitchen, scolding Sherlock about something and telling him to leave his sister alone for now. For Mycroft, alone, was the sound of coins hitting one another in a steady, fervent rhythm in the pockets of the strange man's trousers. He stared down at her with a distracted gleam in his eye, and in her memory he had sharp, shark's teeth as his posture stiffened and he sighed into his grimace.

How old was she?

Nine?

Eight?

She still had dolls. Maybe even seven.

"...And to expect me to go to this ball without the proper attire is beyond rude, Mycroft, for there's bound to be the creme de la creme of gentry there, and I *do* still hold a title and thus must have the correct bearing when in the presence of my peers.."

Mycroft frowned at the phone still held with a white knuckled grip in her hand. She shook her head, as though clearing it of any remaining uncomfortable cobwebs that collected like a hoarder's debris, piles of junk her mother put there.

"You can't call me any more," Mycroft said, and she was surprised herself by the admission that it was, finally, too much.

Silence on the other end of the line. "Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft. I will see you on Saturday."

"You aren't to go. I will call Billingsworth myself and have your invitation rescinded. And you aren't to call me again. I don't care what debts you get into. Put it all on horses and get rid of every scrap of rag and plastic jewellery you own. Put the estate on the line for all I care. I won't help you any more. I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to know you."

"Mycroft, you're being silly."

"You were never my mother."

A sighing tsk on the other end of the line. She would never understand. "Mycroft, it was a long time ago..."

"You treated me like a whore. Like something you could rent out. You have no respect for my life, or my happiness and..." Mycroft felt her voice crack and she knew she had to hang up before her mother clung onto her weakness and hooked her back into her needy drama. "Whatever new debt you're in, you'll have to deal with it. It's enough, mother. Surely you can see that by now."

"Listen here, Mycroft, I am your mother, and..."

Mycroft hung up on her mother's whining voice, her shoulders quaking. She startled when thin hands steadied them, and it took her a moment to realize it was Sherlock standing behind her, his worry engulfed in his usual herb scented cloud.

"The bitch deserved that and more for what she's done," Sherlock reminded her. He gave her shoulders a stronger squeeze and Mycroft placed her palm over his pale, cold fingers. "You were too polite. She can only think of herself, she's not capable of understanding. I know the things she tried to do to you, Mycroft, it took me a long while because I was too young at the time to know, but it became obvious later."

Mycroft blinked back tears. "We were born from a monster."

"She's a selfish old woman who was a selfish young woman, once. She doesn't know any better, she was whored out to dad herself when she was only eighteen and got married to his money. He was in his fifties when you were born. In her experience, it's normal to pawn you off to rich creeps."

Mycroft couldn't stop the shudder that erupted through her body. "Don't give her excuses. There was nothing normal about what she did."

Sherlock's hands slid away and he stood to one side of her, wary and yet sympathetic to her dark mood. "This is really it, then? You're not giving her any more money?"

"I won't. I never want to see or talk to her again."

"She's going to be calling me non stop."

"I'm sorry Sherlock, but I can't let her back in. You're just going to have to deal with her alone."

Sherlock shrugged. "I'll change my number, that's an easy fix. She won't want to talk to me if it means she can't get to you anyway. She never had any interest in me save for that." He gave her stricken expression a concerned one of his own. "This is probably a good thing. She was bleeding you out whenever she could and you know she won't stop until every drop of you is gone. She got lawyers to do it to dad, remember? He died and he barely had enough left for his own coffin in the end. Paid her millions in the divorce agreement when it was finally settled and it's all long gone. Everything put in her hands turns to mist, it's like bloody black magic."

Mycroft hugged her shoulders and glanced around her room, her gaze stuck on the muscular panther that paced within the painting above her and Grace's bed. Perhaps she would switch it out now for something more genial, a print that reflected a certain inner strength rather than the feeling of being prey. Grace had never liked it. She finally understood why.

"Come on," Mycroft said to her brother. John peered nervously in the doorway, a silent sentry to the Holmes's distress. "Toasted bagels and yuba bacon. A worthy breakfast for my morning warriors."

***

"Quite the bloodbath. No proper butchery done here." Manny made a disgusted face as she tried, and failed, to avoid the massive puddle of soured blood that soaked the concrete floor of the decrepit basement apartment. "Looks like they've been living the low life for a while, despite the renovations going on at their business location. I'm guessing that one was customer funded. Any word on where that money came from?"

Grace shook her head, the pink sleeve of her blouse pressed tight against her mouth to keep the sour smell of spoiled blood at bay. The beginning tattoo of a slinky panther cameo was visible just below her wrist. "All we can gather is that the contractors were paid daily in cash and that Boris and Anastasia only visited the property twice a week. We found ledgers in the kitchen outlining the details of their current business transactions, including the purchase of the bodies in China and the travel expenses, but no names and no accounts tracing them back to customers."

The basement apartment was a disgusting hovel, the stink of rot and human decay almost muted by the overall decomposition of debris that lay around the bodies in crumpled heaps of old fast food containers and empty vodka bottles. Grace's team had to tread carefully lest they step on one of the many needles strewn around the place, the dim lighting within the windowless apartment making it difficult to see them. That both Boris and Anastasia had become hardcore heroin addicts was a given, the remnants of drugs and the chaotic garbage strewn life it resulted in fully in evidence in the dank, miserable space. A kitchen sink was full to bursting with filthy dishes and plastic plates. The fridge was grimy, the floor sticky with unknown substances that sat in a thick amber layer at least half an inch thick. The bathroom was non-functional save for the shower, which was filthy. Half empty bottles of shampoo littered the tiled floor, small squares of yellow ceramic lifted up from around the drain. This was a depressing tomb of a place, an addict's nest rather than an actual home.

"Inspector, we found something."

Grace glanced over at the young, pale constable holding what looked to be a black binder which was oddly clean and obviously new. He handed it to her,overly eager to be rid of it, and she watched as the constable wiped his hands on the thighs of his black trousers. "It's all in there, Inspector. I took a look."

Grace raised a brow as she opened the binder and then damned near dropped it when she discovered it was a scrapbook of the ill used dead. Dozens of plastinated bodies, some female, some male, all in suggestive poses that would appeal to the most discerning of necrophiliacs. The worst part were the typed descriptions neatly printed on index cards next to the bodies. 'Little Lola has all her holes ready for you. With extra durable latex so you can get as rough as you want. **$200 damage fee required up front.'

Manny looked over her shoulder. "Oh. Gross."

"Freaking out a coroner. Never thought I'd ever see you queasy."

"Look at this one, she's being advertised as loving double penetration. There's actually more than one freak out there willing to do double duty on a corpse with a partner. The world is fucking sick."

"It's a long drop from where they were." Grace flipped through a few more pages, only to snap the black binder shut, unwilling to see any more unpleasant hinges on dried joints. It was a perverse memento mori. "They used to work with living girls back in the day and were pretty profitable. I'm guessing their addictions took over to the point they couldn't manage their girls or their clients and that part of the business folded up. This version has been proving profitable, however, if the amount of smack used in this hole is any indication. They were clearly ravenous for it, and Boris was hardly a small man, it would have taken a lot of heroin to satisfy him. I'm starting to believe their involvement with the Crown Cartel has more to do with being valued customers than having a business association with them."

"Heads and hands missing, a classic Crown Cartel move," Manny agreed. "You thinking they didn't pay their bills?"

Grace shook her head. "I'm thinking they didn't like being associated with corpsefuckers. Everyone has a line they don't cross, I guess we found the one belonging to the Crown Cartel."

"But the Crown Cartel invested in them, gave them start up money..."

"In a misguided attempt to transport heroin. Using corpses as luggage is one thing, but this is another. The Cartel must have figured out pretty quick that this was a highly inefficient way of getting their product over here, a corpse doesn't hold very much and a stiff plastinated one even less. I'm saying Boris and Anastasia inflated the amount they claimed could get shipped in this way, and then when the numbers obviously fell short and they kept using what small amounts got here before they turned that grade A smack over to the Crown Cartel, well, this is the result."

A small commotion erupted on the floor above them and Grace rolled her eyes at the shrill sound of Powell's voice, its high pitch screeching into the dank basement. "Lestrade! I warned you to stay off this case!"

Powell's red face descended down the stairs and she looked up at his wheezing fury with a bland expression of her own. "Can't see how I can since this actually is a homicide and not a corpse diddling. Pretty sure my job description involves investigating the murdered, but I can clear that with Chief Wilcox if your memory is tad hazy."

Powell marched into the fetid space with a twisted grimace, though it was unclear if it was for the garbage strewn environment he was surrounded by or Grace's presence. His heel kicked at a spent needle on the wet carpet at his feet. He turned and shook a thin finger at Grace as he quickly scanned the scene. "I don't like people stepping in where they don't belong, and I made it very clear that this was my case. The Blue Danube..."

"Has nothing to do with this," Grace tersely reminded him. She placed her hands on her hips, the blue gloves a sharp contrast against her navy trousers. "Are you seriously that narrow in your tunnel vision that even a bloody gang murder is somehow a jewel thief's fault? For God's sake, there's no connection you asshole, these are vile scum of the earth who got their comeuppance for stealing corpses for necros! Give your bloody head a shake!"

She stormed off before he could attack her again, his miserable rodent face looking more and more like a naked rat's the more she had to face him. He was seriously hunting for a bruising with the way he was interfering in her own department, and if he needed a bit of tough love when it came to reminding him that the dead indeed *were* her business in all their forms then she'd gladly give him the kick in the bucked teeth he was looking for.

Her anger must have been obvious, for Manny placed a settling hand on her shoulder as Grace stormed up the dark stairs to the warehouse above. "Wilcox knows this is your case and you are in charge of the scene. Let Powell be a fuck up if he really wants to, it'll just hurt him in the end."

"What gets me is that he believes he has the power to infringe on my authority at all." Grace near let the door to the basement room slam behind her, Manny close on her no nonsense heels. "He's making connections to Mycroft and the Blue Danube that are outright insane. Surely Wilcox can see the man is losing it, he wants his jewellery thief so bad he sees him everywhere, to the point he thinks a mistake in his coffee order is somehow the Blue Danube's fault. And the higher ups aren't getting it, they're letting him run amok within other departments and getting in everybody's craw and messing up investigations he's got no business in. I'm sick of it, Manny. He's a bloody wart and yet here he is winning all the personality contests the higher ranks lap up. Did you know the Commander is looking to give him a promotion thanks to all the positive reviews of that show they aired on BBC-4? Bastards made him look like a bloody tortured hero and he's just a slimy little berk who can barely fill out a report let alone catch a criminal mastermind."

Manny stood in front of her, stopping Grace's agitated march. The Docks were crawling with constables yet again, and curious dockworkers meandered around the periphery, arms crossed and eyes hooded in the dark. Grace checked her watch and hissed at the late hour, wishing she could just ditch all of it and head back to bed. "I'm bloody tired, Manny."

"There's not much else to go on now, the forensics have the rest of it covered. Go home, Grace. And not to that shit flat, go home to Mycroft and let her fuss over you. I know you think you hate it, but you don't, you love that she's the dramatic, romantic type and you get swept up in her excitement. When did she get the dog? Friendly thing, if a bit skittish."

"Belonged to those prats," Grace said, using her battered notebook to point over her left shoulder to the closed basement door behind her. "They abandoned it at the house and Mycroft stole it."

Manny bit her bottom lip at this. "Hunh."

Grace raised a brow. "What? You're smelling something, I can tell, you always make that little face, halfway disgusted and triumphant, like you put mustard on chips."

"We might have a timeline to their demise with the abandonment of the dog. It was just a couple of days ago, right?"

"Yeah, about fifty hours give or take."

"An elegant breed of dog like that didn't come cheap, it served a purpose. It was meant to put clients at ease while at the same time giving the place a regal air."

Grace wasn't sure. "People abandon dogs all the time. They forget they don't stay puppies.

"Not a dog like that, they're fairly rare around here and believe me, they cost a pretty penny, that kind of investment was made on purpose. The customers, they must have been fond of dogs, not city folk but country gentry living on estates outside of London, so rich that Belgravia was considered roughing it."

Grace mulled this over, expanding on the idea. "They were uneasy about coming into unfamiliar territory without their entourage, and the building looked too clinical. The dog was meant to disarm them, put their guilt aside and reassure them that this was a place of genteel perversion, nothing more. Decadent, but controlled." Grace licked her lips over the prospect. "Boris and Anastasia knew the surface of how the elite worked but they were hardly experts. They were sewer rats in practise and the clinical look of the house was more about making it seem clean, with the dog adding an air of hominess that wasn't going to take. They messed up the whole operation big time, and it's likely their buyers backed out."

"And the money they borrowed from the Crown Cartel for their creepy start-up was wasted, along with the small amount of heroin they managed to smuggle in with the fresher corpses we found here a week ago. They were probably hoping that stash would appease the Crown Cartel in lieu of a loan payment, but they ended doing what junkies do and squandered the whole thing in a week long binge instead."

"The corpse buyer couldn't have been happy. He must have visited that address in Belgravia at least once during the last week, seeking out his purchase. There's lots of surveillance there, I know of two cameras just ten feet apart from each other. I'll get our guy in IT to go over the CCTV footage."

Both Grace and Manny's cell phones rang at the same time, and they exchanged puzzled looks. "It's Sherlock," Manny said, and Grace rolled her eyes. "He says it's urgent."

"Everything is urgent when you're a paranoid pothead." She hit the green answer button and pressed the cell close to her ear, quickly scanning around her to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. The last thing she needed right now was more fuel for Powell to burn her with and Sherlock was like lighter fluid. Being the brother of Mycroft had not done the idiot any favours when it came to Powell, who was still furious the doobie smoking, red-eyed bum had found the Crown Cartel's street connections well before he did.

"What do you want Sherlock? I'm working."

"She's in the bottom stairwell!"

Grace frowned. "Who is?" Grace suddenly snapped up, alert. "Has Mycroft fallen down the stairs? I told her not to wear spindly shoes on those stairs! Is she all right?"

"It's not Mycroft," Sherlock testily replied. "Doesn't anything not revolve around her for a change? I'm telling you there's a dead girl in the stairwell of my building and you'd best get here! She's snapped in half, like a dried twig! Poor John's been sick twice!"   
  
~*~

The landlady, Mrs. Hudson, stood bored and tired on the front steps of her crumbling apartment building, her arms crossed over her too thin chest, a lit cigarette dangling between skeletal fingers. Slum was a polite description of the tenement's neglect, for the place looked about ready to topple if someone jumped too hard on the sidewalk in front of it, the crumbling outer walls revealing large cracks in the foundation. It was set to be slated for demolition within the next couple of years, Grace had seen the paperwork herself, but there had been no effort made in the interim to rehome the people currently living there. Mrs. Hudson didn't run a council house and as such though she was required to notify her tenants of the building's imminent demise she didn't have to be quick about it. A month's notice, by law. It was unlikely they would even get that.

Grace wasn't too happy about the idea of Sherlock and John turned out on the street because that meant they'd wander off to the most logical new place to roll their joints and that was Mycroft's lovely estate. Yes, they visited every day but that was a much different animal from outright living with them. Grace thought about Sherlock's messy habits, his poor hygiene and his inability to keep on topic in a conversation and she shuddered against the inevitability.

Sherlock was bouncing in the front lobby, his tattered trench coat trailing after him like burnt pieces of paper carried on the wind. "She's down here!"

Grace cautiously followed him with Manny close behind her. The stairs creaked with a snapping sound that made them feel as though they were about to crumble into dust and every step became a treacherous risk. Sherlock, used to living in this matchstick architecture, was oblivious as he bounded down the splintering wooden boards, his boots heavy as they stomped along the cracked concrete basement floor. He ducked under the stairwell and Grace followed him, using the flashlight on her cell phone to illuminate his discovery.

It wasn't as gruesome a scene as she was expecting, though the glint of hinges on limbs was more than a tad repulsive. A nude body, female, that had been dead to the point of mummification greeted them, her desiccated remains neatly snapped in half at the torso so she could fit better in the small space. Grace swung her light over and around it, puzzling out who might have left such macabre mannequin here while Manny stood beside her, her blonde ponytail swinging as she shook her head.   
"I'm betting we'll be able to ID this one through that catalogue we found. This could be a dumping site when they were abandoning the business, there's probably more of them strewn around this building."

"It's in such disrepair they probably thought no one was living here," Grace said giving Sherlock and a shocked John a tired once over. "How many people live in this shack?"

"About fifteen. John, myself, a couple of families, some old people, one or two prostitutes and a couple of drug dealers. I can tell you which apartments house who, if you like, I know them all and all of their habits. Janine is a transgendered former banker and she does my taxes. She lives in 301A." Sherlock shifted where he stood. "She was the one who found the body. She's in a traumatized state, she's in my flat right now calming down with some quality skunk tea, courtesy of John."

John nodded a terse affirmative at this, his pallor so pronounced in the gloom he was like a glow lamp. Grace chanced a glance away from the scene and gave Manny and the forensic team she arrived with a terse nod. "I'll have to get a statement. Process what you can here, but I doubt it's going to be of much use to us, the perpetrators are already dead themselves."

"You think Boris and Anastasia dumped the body here?"

"Bodies, plural. I don't think that extra fifth arm belongs to that corpse." Grace pointed into the gloom beneath the staircase with the light from her cell phone, illuminating a stray limb and some rather suspicious black bags tucked into the far corner. Manny placed a hand over her mouth in shock.

"They dumped the necrotutes."

"The what?"

"Little nickname I've been giving them. Reminds me I'm dealing with the already dead instead of the newly dead."

Grace felt sick. Yet another basement in yet another dump, this one housing the living though not for long. The air smelled of centuries old rot, and she could taste the poverty in the foul air around them. Old cabbage and dust with an overlay of roasted plastic. Mummified corpses fit right in.

She watched as one of the forensic techs grabbed at the loose arm and it snapped into fragile shards in his grip. "Be careful with that!" Manny warned.

"Hard to believe anyone could do the nasty with something that prone to breaking." Grace inspected the broken limb as it was taken out of its hiding space, the arm desiccated, the inner bones showing through, the dried out marrow making them look like dried, foamy straws. "I guess they didn't figure on this design flaw in their gross plan."

"People think plastic equals strong but that isn't always the case. The human body is comprised of very thin materials and these corpses don't have any fat and they are near mummies in this state. They're dried up and the result is a body that's like onionskin paper, tough in some places, like the skin, and crushable for the rest, especially old veins and the network of nerve endings. Someone really didn't do their research first."

"They never had a customer base," Grace said, only to frown over this. "Or they had one customer and were hoping to draw in more through him. The money promised had to have been substantial, enough to pay house renovations in Belgravia."

"So where will we find this creepy benefactor?" Manny poked at the inside of the discovered body's cavity. "These things are kind of cool. I've never seen the human heart from this angle before, via the stomach."

Grace turned away. "I'm going upstairs to talk to the witness."

Manny left her inspection of the body and gave John, who was now standing silent and ill beside her, a wide grin. She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a crushing hug around his stout shoulders. "How's about a coffee run, my Puppy John? Black, two sweeteners. You already know how Grace takes hers."

John gave Grace a substantially stronger, near military nod at this, clearly thankful to have been given a simple task that would prove to be essential as time wore on. He was bold enough in his desire to comfort Grace that he placed a hand on her shoulder and gently patted it, not in the usual way a person offering support would, but weirdly cautious, as though he was afraid the touch would burn him but he knew it was necessary.

He'd pushed through his jealousy to be nice to her, Grace realized, because it was always Mycroft he clung to most, who got those little tiny touches, fleeting and affectionate and scared of repercussions. Not for the first time Grace wondered where the real John Watson was hiding within all of that confused physical trauma that was now shrouding his brain in fog. He'd been a surgeon, once, before the accident that had cracked his marbles. She felt guilty that she'd never investigated who that particular ghost was.

She slowly made her way up the stairs, their creaking boards popping dangerously at intervals and making her wonder if she was going to go crashing back into the basement at the first misstep. Sherlock followed closely behind her on far more careless feet, the wood actually splintering hard beneath his frantic steps. "You have to be very careful how you talk to Janine." He was breathless behind Grace, the years of heavy smoking taking their toll on his damaged lungs. "She is a sensitive sort and she's not happy about her current situation. She used up all of her savings to get a sexual reassignment surgery in Brazil and when she came back she couldn't get a job in her field."

"Banking," Grace said.

"Quite a low blow, really, you'd think the financial community would be more understanding, I mean, who cares what a person looks like as long as they are making the money? She's not a freak or anything, she's quite lovely, actually, but please don't be your usual brash, blunt, miserable self, she needs a bit of kindness."

Grace turned on her heel and on him, her grip white-knuckled on the banister. "Are you suggesting I've ever been otherwise with a witness?"

Sherlock shrugged, the hem of his tattered coat lifting slightly from the lobby floor as he stepped onto it and joined Grace. "You can be a bit...Prickly."

"I am never!"

"You don't take criticism well, either."

"I take it just fine when it's true!"

Still, Grace was taken aback by the rather glamorous woman standing pale and shaken in the lobby of the tenement, her long, red silk gown hugging her rather muscular body close. She had gorgeous, flowing chestnut hair that hung in silk waves halfway down her shoulders and she tossed her hair back to reveal the sleek curve of her neck and a rather prominent Adam's apple. There was a fierce sort of femininity about her, she had claimed it with a warrior's sensibility that few who were born as women possessed. Grace felt dumpy in her navy trousers and buttoned down shirt and her far too masculine jacket that fit uncomfortably over her slightly pudgy frame. Janine was wearing delicate heels that Cinderella herself would be envious of, and Grace unconsciously shifted in her no nonsense black unisex treads, everything about herself suddenly feeling blocky and unappealing. "I hear you found the bodies."

"Such a disgusting way to treat a person who has expired." Janine's voice was breathy and delicate, though Grace suspected it could become quite deep and harsh when it was needed. "I witnessed the whole thing, I know who did this. Their names are Boris and Anastasia and they are sex traffickers."

Grace didn't let on about their fates and took out her notebook, her pen poised over it. "How do you know them?"

Janine hesitated a long moment. She glanced up the small set of stairs that led to the second floor as though it were a hint that she would prefer to be interviewed in the safety of her flat. Grace didn't budge, she had no need for John's special tea and with a half dozen body pieces in the basement that had to be processed and compared with the macabre catalogue they'd found earlier she didn't have time for too many niceties with long limbed witnesses who smelled like lavender and chamomile soap. Sherlock was already halfway up the set of stairs leading to the third floor, his head poking around the corner as if to likewise coax Grace into Janine's flat. But Grace stood her ground and stubbornly remained planted in the lobby, the witness statement echoing out of the front doors and down the dark, early morning steps. Mrs. Hudson stood at the curb, the amber light of her cigarette a coal that was absorbed into the black of the street. Whatever horrible information was about to be described was now in the radar of the building's ruling demon, her sharp features poised like a carnivorous rat for any tidbit of news.

"Mrs. Hudson hates it when the police are here," Sherlock said. "She hovers around like a vampire until they're gone, it's like she's afraid they're going to discover she doing something illegal."

"She is," Grace informed him. "She's the owner of a slum, this place is supposed to be condemned and free of tenants and yet the place is full. I'm sure she's had plenty of citations and I'm going to give her another one, but with the London market the way it is people will pay any kind of money to live in a filthy hole like this. You shouldn't be here, Sherlock, it's not healthy for you or John, I'm sure the walls are full of mold, asbestos and cancer. It's cleaner and safer in the alley beside the place."

"I like my neighbours," Sherlock protested.

"You like getting in your neighbours' business and soaking up their drama. There's a whole other kind of world out there, Sherlock, you know that well enough in how you were raised, you don't have to go all the way to the bottom most of us hover somewhere in the middle." Grace tapped the tip of her pen on the notebook still open in her grip. She turned to an expectant Janine. "Right, so let's get this out of the way. You knew these bastards. How?"

Janine looked dejected at this question. "I think it should be obvious."

Grace shrugged. "Not to me it isn't."

Janine stood closer to Sherlock and Grace was surprised to see Sherlock bend close to her ear, then whisper into with a strange intimacy. Was she his girlfriend? She certainly had striking looks enough, even with the slight shadow of a mannish outline which dwindled the more Grace got used to her. Grace hadn't pegged Sherlock to be the type to appreciate an aggressively feminine woman like Janine, but then she was playing the distress card for all it was worth and Grace herself had fallen hard for that tactic. A sudden softness invaded her at the way Sherlock held Janine's wrist and tried to urge her forward, to talk more freely, but Janine kept looking out the front doors of the lobby and out into the street where the demonic Mrs. Hudson stood on the sidewalk, sucking on a stick of Hell's coals.

"We can go upstairs to your flat if you'd be more comfortable talking there," Grace said, and Janine let out a deep sigh of relief at this, her large, but delicate heels trotting up the stairs to the third floor with Grace and Sherlock following close behind. John came into the lobby bearing coffees and Grace motioned for him to deliver one to Manny in the basement first.

301A was a very neat and tidy flat despite the obvious rot in the walls and the crumbling state of the kitchen. The refrigerator was a small portable to replace the ancient aqua blue relic that squatted in rusty disrepair in the corner of the galley kitchen, and a toaster oven was plugged into the wall, the socket scorched black. The oven that came with the flat no longer had a door and the insides were rusted out, making it unusable. Janine had opted to put a few potted plants in it to try and cheer the dreary space up. A tad ingenious and indicative of her positive spirit, no wonder Sherlock liked her.

"I worked for them," Janine said once the front door was closed behind them. She ushered Grace into her living room, though the flat was more of a single bachelor space, with the kitchen, living room and bedroom all encompassing a small square area while the bathing room was tucked into a closet corner. It took Grace all of one minute to circle the entirety of the flat and to get a good look into the bathing room and its skinny shower, sink and toilet perched on busted tiles and green tinged drywall that was crumbling from damp. An attempt had been made to keep it clean, but one couldn't fight against actual decay no matter how hard one tried.

She was guided to a small thrift store couch which Sherlock eagerly sat on, but Grace remained standing, notebook in hand. "I'm guessing this was when they had the sex trafficking business and they were still using live girls. From what I've gathered they had a lucrative clientele in those days and business was booming. What changed? Why did they go the freak route?"

Janine chewed her bottom lip, the cherry red lipstick she wore staining her teeth. Instantly conscious of this, she gave them a subtle wipe with a fresh tissue handed to her by Sherlock and then pressed the tissue against her nose as she spoke, her breathless voice muffled in the damp dark of her flat. "I worked for them several years ago before I knew it was better to just get some stable clients on my own instead. I know what to watch out for now, but I was new to that whole business, and the only reason I got into it in the first place was to pay for my surgery. National health didn't cover it back then and my hormone therapy still isn't entirely covered even now. I felt like I had no other way to make the money, I was fired from my job when I started to transition and the court sided with my ex wife and awarded her everything. I was left with barely enough to rent this awful flat let alone got to Brazil. I knew another working girl who used to live her, a Ukrainian who hooked me up with Boris and Anastasia. They were slimy individuals and took too high of a percentage off of my earnings, but they had lots of clients and since I was willing to put the hours in I managed to scrounge up enough to get my plane ticket and my surgery." Janine slowly hissed a tortured sigh through her teeth. "I'm not going to tell you the ordeals I went through daily to obtain that goal. A dog shouldn't be treated the way we were, like chattel in a catalogue. The girl I knew, she had been brought over from the Ukraine on the pretence of getting a job as a housekeeper, and it was of course a very different story when she got here. She was raped repeatedly for months before they forced her to work for them. Her spirit was broken, there's no question of that, and she lived in fear of them."

Grace poised her pen over her notebook. "But she roped you into working for them, too."

Janine slowly nodded, the tissue still held at her nose, hiding the tortured grimace beneath it. "She had a quota. She had to bring in new recruits, at least two a month. Because I was considered 'unusual' she got a free pass for two months before she had to go scouring the streets for junkies willing to sell themselves for Boris and Anastasia. Anastasia was a cruel woman, selfish and greasy, she was the brains behind the money while Boris used to beat the girls if they got out of line."

"This friend of yours, she still around for us to talk to?"

Janine shook her head and tears marred her long lashes, smudges of mascara smeared beneath her large,brown eyes. "Boris and Anastasia started doing more heroin than they pushed on their girls and their hold on them waned. A lot of girls escaped from them when they were too spaced out to discipline them. My friend, though, she was in so deep with them, so brainwashed and terrified she thought she couldn't leave. I urged her to get away and finally, one day, she packed up her little backpack and didn't show up for her client list that day. Anastasia, high as a kite, went through the roof, vowing she was going to take her out."

Grace frowned over her notes. "Where did these girls escape from? Was there some kind of house or something they were kept in?"

"It was a suburban house, if you can believe it, in a really nice area. Boris and Anastasia chose it because the upper middle class are too busy working to pay their mortgages to pay attention to the comings and goings of their neighbours. Everyone in London is on the hustle and someone operating a small business from their home is hardly out of place. They had a nice classy sign put up on the front door in copper and black letters--'Crown Communications--Ghost-8, Ltd.'"

Grace paused at this, the obvious connection to the Crown Cartel staring at her in bald evidence. "You're sure that's what the sign said?"

"I am, it struck me as odd. What does Ghost-8 mean?" Janine let the tissue fall into her lap as she clasped her hands at her knees. Though she was easily over six feet tall and as broad shouldered as a football player she seemed small and vulnerable on the thrift store couch, the torn velvet cushion at her side a pathetic attempt to regain the luxurious shadow of her former wealth.

"She called herself Candy Corn, but that obviously wasn't her real name," Janine said. "You won't find her, she died several years ago. Murdered by those two monsters." Janine shuddered. "They cut off her head and hands, the sick sons of bitches. I cut them loose right after that and they disappeared for a while until I saw them again earlier this evening, dumping that...Ugh...They really are plastinated corpses?" Janine's look of horrified disgust was enough to make bile rise anew in Grace's throat and she winced as she wallowed it down. "Sherlock told me you found them earlier tonight. Is it true they're really dead?"

"Very much so, and in the same manner as Candy Corn." A prickling sensation rose up and down Grace's spine, the story Janine had told her making clear connections to another case. "So it was Boris and Anastasia who murdered Candy Corn, not anyone else?"

Janine let out a derisive and rather unladylike snort at this. "Obviously, they made it pretty clear to the girls that this could end up being their fate if they tried to escape. It backfired, the girls lives were at stake and they knew it, they'd take off first chance they could get. I'm sad to say that Candy's death was my out. I never went back to that line of work after that, I do computer programming from an office in Chelsea now. Boring, but considering what I went through to get here, I can cope with that."

Grace pocketed her pen and notebook as Manny came into view, her ponytail giving her a lopsided cameo in the shadow of Janine's doorway. "Forensics all done down there?"

"Yeah, we're packing it up and heading for the meat locker. You coming?"

"In a minute." A warm cup was placed in Grace's hand and she looked up slightly dazed to see John had made sure she got her cuppa. She sipped at it, appreciative. "I got to ask, was Candy Corn known by any other names? Like Moonflower?"

Janine's large brown eyes widened. "How did you know about that one? She only used it on her creepy clients."

The pieces of the puzzles suddenly bolted shut and Grace took a staggering step back at the force of the clarity that suddenly erupted through her consciousness. "Thank you for your time, Janine. I'll be in touch if I need to speak with you about anything else."

"Which means that is unlikely," Sherlock helpfully added.

Grace wanted to reprimand him for this but she was riding on the high of a suddenly solved case, one that had far reaching implications into their current one. She grabbed Manny's arm and led her back down the rickety wooden stairs and into the crumbling abyss of a lobby. Manny swung her ponytail at her, riding on her excitement.

"You figured something out. I can see it in how cherry red your cheeks are and how you're flying out of this place. Will we find the final piece on the slab?"

"No, I got it all in my noggin already."

Dawn was finally beginning to break. Holy crap did she ever need some sleep. "The dead can wait, Manny. Go home and get some rest."

Manny stood aback from this. "Just like that? Leave it and go?"

"They aren't going to give us any further clues, they're just proof that Boris and Anastasia were creeps. But what Janine told me adds a whole other dimension to this case, one that definitely does involve the Crown Cartel but not in the capacity we thought it was."

Manny brought her coffee cup to her lips and eagerly sipped it. She paused as they passed the silent, brooding Mrs. Hudson who looked like she buried tenants who didn't pay her rent on time in the very basement where the bodies were dumped. "So what's the deal? Don't leave me in suspense, Grace."

"The Crown Cartel got involved with Boris and Anastasia not because of a lucrative method of transporting heroin, but because they wanted revenge. Boris and Anastasia murdered a prostitute and tried to put the blame on the Crown Cartel by dismembering the body the way they do it. All this time I'd thought the victim had a connection with their drug dealers, but that wasn't the case at all. Boris and Anastasia copied the cartel's killing style and that pissed their leader, the Ghost, off." Grace shook her head at the scope of it. "All of this was an elaborate prank on those freaks. There was never any intention to assist Boris and Anastasia with Cartel money invested in their kinky necrotutes. Revenge and murder was on the slab right from the start."

 

.

 

 

 


	8. cellars and canapes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft is rather tactless with Grace. She nearly makes a professional faux-pas, only for Victoria Holmes to come to the rescue. 
> 
> A hidden cellar? What jewels are hidden there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO MORE CHAPTERS!
> 
> Thank you, btw, Megsnotutopia, for your continued lovely, encouraging comments and for taking the plunge and reading this story (You may be the only one, LOL)

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter eight

"It would have been nice to have been given a proper warning." Grace fussed with the top button of her salmon coloured silk blouse, hating the way it made her skin look sallow. She brushed at her shortly cropped hair with her fingertips forcing the strands into a messy halo of silvery blonde, the dark roots starting to show. Mycroft, as ever, was a portrait of genteel elegance, with soft pearls at her throat and layers of grey chiffon that flowed along her long limbs with a sense of unadorned maturity. Her lithe beauty made Grace's breath catch and she turned away, frowning into the mirror once again and worrying at her plastic pearl buttons.

"Fretting in front of hallway mirrors hardly improves things," Mycroft admonished her. She pulled her away and made a point to wrap her arm tight in the crook of Grace's and forced her to walk with her into the main ballroom.

"The buttons on this stupid blouse are pulling."

"Stop caring."

"There's a gap!"

"Unbutton that third one and act as though the cleavage is intentional. Do not apologize for your appearance, Grace. That is how one shows the height of confidence."

Easy for Mycroft to say for this was her circle, all these glittering mid level royals and perfectly chiselled celebrities who looked as though they'd been dipped in gold. Grace nervously nursed her glass of bubbly champagne, wishing it was a stronger spirit. Matters were worsened by the fact that Powell was in attendance, some idiot friend of Billingsworth had mentioned he was featured on a BBC-4 mini-series and the man was hardly able to resist any opportunity to preen. He was currently at the punch bowl chatting up a wealthy heiress who smiled too much and wore too much foundation make-up to hide the plastic surgery lines at her chin. He caught Grace's eye and expressed a microflash of both surprise and disapproval, both of which were smoothly masked by his oily charm. Grace tried to make her escape by hunting for Mycroft who had already slipped away from her and disappeared into the crowd, giving Powell the edge to get to her first with a good sprint across the large room. Grace tried to look past him, out the tall glass doors leading into the outside garden and further out onto the grounds where glitter glanced against moonlight. He forced himself into her line of vision.

"Fancy meeting you here, of all places! How did you secure an invite, some kind of article getting written that I don't know about? They like their TV folk, this crowd does, and I know why my familiar face is all the rage. They're talking a pile of BAFTA's for the Blue Danube series, including best actor for that fellow who played me." Powell was slightly puffed up at this, making his rat face look phlegmatic. He drank what looked to be a vodka martini, making Grace thirsty for one. "So I know why I'm here, but can't figure on how you fit in."

Grace made a general motion towards the back garden doors. "I'm here with Mycroft. Her mother is the Dowager Duchess."

Powell raised a brow at this as though he didn't fully believe her. He sipped at his strong drink while Grace stared into her fizzy champagne, longing to pitch it in his face. "I would think you'd be a bit busy, seeing as how you got all those dead people waiting on your reports."

"You can't say I'm tardy, Powell, you're here too."

"Didn't say a word in that regard, you're the one feeling that moral pinch."

"In case you've forgotten I just solved a decades old case thanks to my involvement in this investigation. If you have a problem with seeing positive results, take it up with Wilcox." Grace downed her champagne in one gulp. "I see plenty of BBC execs here, why don't you go ball on one of them? Or maybe I should start getting chatty and get one of those specials for myself. I hear Netflix likes being edgy, they might take a liking to mummified sex corpses, get Lars Von Trier to write and direct the thing, give it the kind of creepy edge it deserves. A better casting of you would work, too. I wonder if Val Kilmer is busy, though he's a tad too bloated these days for your lean, mean look."

She shook him off before he could offer some proper barbs of his own, his only comeback a shouted, "Go on, be jealous then!" at her back. She rubbed the back of her neck and wished she was anywhere but in this crowded house with its expensive junk and mismatched art that cheapened all in their proximity. She half expected to find one of the mummified corpses propped up in a corner, staring blankly at a Maud Lewis painting across from it, the hollow, plastinated eyes gaping at colourful cows in primary colours.

For fuck's sake, where was Mycroft?

She found her on the periphery of the garden, having a heated argument with her mother, the Dowager Duchess Victoria Holmes. She took in the small woman with her hunched back and the bright yellow, beaded evening gown with a bodice that dipped well past modesty and the equally yellow teeth behind pink lipstick that near sneered at her approach, and it took all of Grace's power not to turn on her heel and run in the opposite direction.

Mycroft's face was a tortured shade of crimson. "I told you not to come here!" she hissed through her teeth.

Victoria Holmes tutted in displeasure at her daughter. "I had an invitation I'm hardly crashing the party, gauche as that would be." She gave Grace's approach an unpleasant once over. "Ah, I see, there's your version of your man stumbling forward to greet us now. Hello, Grace. I'm surprised you aren't traipsing about London as you usually do, wiping the city clean of its nasty human grime. Criminals have a free ride tonight, I suppose. Reminds me, I got a ticket the last time I parked at the track, and I was hoping you could fix that for me."

"I got nothing to do with the traffic department, Mrs. Holmes, and you know this." Grace placed her free hand on her hip and stared down at Mrs. Holmes, gaining a perverse pleasure out of the way Victoria Holmes turned away from her and that decidedly unladylike and official copper stance. "Mycroft, why didn't you warn me Powell was going to be here? I just got cornered by that berk and let me tell you, it's a right miracle I didn't shove this damned champagne glass down his throat." She held the glass aloft. "What am I supposed to do with this, anyway? It's empty now, and there's no sink around to put it in."

Victoria Holmes made a choked, theatrical sound that made her false teeth rattle. "Oh dear God, this is the best you could do, Mycroft? The woman is practically dragging her knuckles through a cave."

"Shut it, mother. Grace, you can put the glass down anywhere, one of the many servers and servants will pick it up."

Grace obliged, putting the glass on the nearest surface which happened to be the brick lip of a sectioned off part of the garden. The glass wobbled then toppled to the ground in a tinkering smash onto the cobblestones beneath their feet. Mrs. Holmes rolled her eyes and clutched her plastic yellow pearls close. "Hopeless," she muttered.

'As hopeless as the horses you bet on,' Grace bitterly agreed, and not even Mycroft's arm tucked into her own helped her pervasive unease.

Mycroft gave her elbow a tight squeeze. "Relax. You committed no crime, a broken glass is not the end of the world. See, it's being swept up behind us already, forgotten. You could have dropped your drawers and mooned the lot of them and as long as you slunk away for a short time and then came back later, fully dressed and cheerful, the incident would be wilfully forgotten. It's how this lot works. Embarrassing things just don't happen. Smiling and showing lots of clean, perfect teeth cures all ills." She tilted her head at Grace's neck, her precious lips daring to find the pulse there. "Have you seen the Duchess of Bala yet? She's supposed to be here with her brother, I've heard the sotto voiced exclamations over her latest outfit. I've been trying to spot her in the crowd, but between Billingsworth and Mother I've been blocked in the effort. If you see her, please let me know if she's wearing a rather distinctive necklace, one with an array of blue diamonds dotting its pattern."

"All these titles mean nothing at all to me," Grace said, scanning the crowd and coming up empty. "I know there's supposed to be some kind of royal hierarchy in it all, but I can't organize any of it in my head."

"That's because most of the titles are flat out made up." Mycroft shrugged. "No one questions things if you have enough money. If you want to be a duchess, just call yourself one. President, mogul, executive, boss, they can all be shifted into titles of some royal meaning with a little imagination and a tweak of assistance from the right connections. Arthur Billingsworth III, for instance, is considered the equerry to the Princess, but he rarely engages in his role and earned the title solely by his connections and his old, leftover money. His wife holds most of the family assets."

"So there's commoners everywhere," Grace observed.

"One would say that to be a proper leader, one would have to be one from the start." She grimaced and held Grace's arm a little to tightly for her liking, enough for her fingers to bruise. "Here she comes. Dear Madame, the creature that runs this place. Hang on Grace, two powerhouses of blind, snobbish judgement are about to descend, one in the form of my stupid mother and the other in that harpy's grin." Mycroft's face erupted into a facetious smile as a wiry elderly woman wearing a suit Thatcher would have found too conservative marched up to them. "Mrs. Billingsworth, such a pleasure to see you again!"

There were no fake society smiles for Mycroft. She pointed a manicured talon at her. "You did not inform me that your mother is the Dowager Duchess of this region. A painfully embarrassing omission, Mycroft, and one that I take as a personal slight." She gave a weird sort of warmth to Victoria Holmes who stood proudly beside her. "I take you are still residing at Paisley Cottage?"

"Oh yes, firmly planted there, I assure you. The grounds are beautiful this time of year, you must visit."

"Really?" Mycroft asked, brow raised, her mother's expression one of warning, which Mycroft wilfully ignored. "The last I saw of it the windows were cracked and the place was overrun with weeds. You can barely get to the front door thanks to all that bramble."

"A recommendation by my gardener," Victoria Holmes quickly explained away. "One has to let the honeysuckle mature before one tries to control it."

But Dear Madame had found a more interesting topic, one which she flavoured with her usual ignorance. "I see you are hand in hand, Miss...?"

"Grace Lestrade." She extended her hand, but Dear Madame didn't take the greeting.

"Grace is a Detective Inspector with the New Scotland Yard," Victoria Holmes added, which did not put her in Dear Madame's good books at all. "She pulled herself away from murdered corpses to come to your soiree."

"How kind of you," Dear Madame sneered. She gave Mycroft an additional judging disapproval, her tongue near clucking the bridge of her mouth. "I suppose one has to make concessions to these modern times, and the fact that two women can so brazenly announce their affection for one another is an indication of that progress." Dear Madame clucked as she stared at Grace's hand entwined casually in Mycroft's own. "I myself am more of a traditionalist. In the old days, affairs were conducted with significantly more discretion. I rather miss that."

"I hear your daughter had the sprog of a drug dealer," Grace said, loudly, enough for several heads to turn. "I know him, by the way, from back when I was in the drug squad. Nice enough bloke, even if he was dealing smack for the Crown Cartel. Did that DNA test come back and is he the father after all or is it some other bloke? He's got two other kids, you know, two different mums, they live in the East End, around the Sparrows. Probably right pissed that he's being appraised by you lot when he hasn't paid his child support in years." Grace neatly plucked a new glass of champagne from a tray, the servant slightly ducking to accommodate her before moving on. "'Ta. I like this, it's right refreshing. Tastes like liquid bubblegum."

With this outburst, Dear Madame opted to save face by steering Victoria Holmes away from her daughter and to put as much distance between themselves and Grace as possible. It was a tactic that was welcome by both Mycroft and Grace who edged closer to one another in a protracted, twin sigh of relief. "Bloody horror show, those two," Grace observed. She sipped her champagne. "I made all that stuff up about the father of the child. I haven't a clue who he is."

"I doubt your assessment was far off, Sally Billingsworth has sworn off her family and this latest beau has no inclination to be a part of them, either. The wedding to poor Kevin was a disaster right from the start, and I'm thinking that young man is more relieved to be free of them than not." Mycroft glanced over Grace's shoulder and noted the few curious looks they were still getting. "You shouldn't have mentioned the Crown Cartel. Good and bad money mix just the same, and your talk of them has made the gentry nervous. It'll be harder for me to get into the confidence of the Duchess now, and harder still to figure out where she's keeping her jewels."

"You shouldn't be talking about things like that with an officer of the law," Grace cheerfully said to her.

"Exactly. They're all now acting as though there are targets on their backs and you've got a massive supply of arrows. A good chunk of these psychopaths enjoy their recreational drugs, they aren't going to look kindly on the woman who can halt their supply. Try to put your copper act on the back burner, at least for now."

Grace grimaced at her choice of words. "An act? Mycroft, being a DI is my bloody life, and you know this. Where do you get off telling me to hide myself when you know damned well I can't do that!"

Mycroft nervously tapped her fingers along the walls of her champagne glass, her eyes still searching through the crowd for signs of the jewels she was set to steal. Dammit, she was a fool to think Mycroft would ever even think about giving all this up for her, that retirement from thieving was ever going to be on the table.

"I'm just saying that you have to watch yourself in this crowd, Grace. It's bad enough my Mother has compromised me by outing my association with her, I don't need your guttural approach to put me further on the outs. This persona I've cultivated took a decade's worth of work, and a tiny shred of thoughtless carelessness can ruin it all!"

"So insulting me, bringing me here as an armrest only to treat me like a beat up couch is all right, is it?" Grace gulped her glass of champagne down, draining the glass of every drop. She put the empty glass on the ground at her feet and watched as a servant, clearly watching her for further breakages, snatched up the glass before anyone noticed where she'd placed it. "Bloody hell, I want to go home."

"If you are going to do that Catherine needs a walk," Mycroft tersely replied.

"I'm not talking about your Belgravia hoity-toity mansion, I'm talking about my bloody little rat hole flat! I'm not comfortable here, I'm not keen on any of this and I'm not about to be clutching pearls and wearing pinching shoes just to make you look good, you snobbish, self-serving bitch!"

Mycroft hardly heard her. She had found her target within the crowd and was eager to make contact. "There she is, over at the ice fountain with the Count of Monaco! I can see the blue diamonds within that necklace glittering from here, isn't it marvellous! Precious snowflakes embedded in white gold!"

She hadn't heard a word that Grace had said. Feeling like a broken wheel she turned her back to her and stormed off, ready to put this stupid party and all of its judgmental bullshit behind her.

"Where are you going?"

"Enjoy your flakes!" Grace shouted back at her.

~*~

Mycroft didn't have time for Grace's tantrum, not with the object of her latest acquisition standing in her direct line of vision, that glittering promise at the Duchess's throat pulling her forward as though she were attached by a hook. Mycroft's cheeks hurt she was smiling so hard, and perhaps her eagerness was a tad too manic seeing as how the Spanish Duchess of Bala gave her a rather shocked expression and pulled away rather than leaning towards her in greeting. Mycroft immediately toned her predatory grin down and brought the exchange into a much more congenial arrangement. "I have heard so much about you and I simply had to come and introduce myself. I am Mycroft Holmes, I'm a good friend of the Billingsworths." She pushed her shoulders back and gave the handsome tanned stranger standing beside the Duchess an equally warm greeting. "And you are?"

"Her brother," the man proclaimed. He had very white teeth that near glowed in contrast against the olive complexion of his Mediterranean skin. The Duchess had a likewise countenance, her Spanish accent adding an exoticism to her beauty that she used to her full advantage.

Mycroft was sure her brother did as well. She knew a gay man on the make when she saw one.

"You were here earlier with a woman, were you not?" the Duchess smoothly asked. "I don't see her with you now."

"She had to get called away on case." Mycroft held her chin aloft. "She's a Detective Inspector for Scotland Yard, she's quite busy. Homicide."

The Duchess placed a delicate hand at her throat, covering those beautiful diamonds. Mycroft itched to slap her slender tanned fingers out of the way. "Such a gruesome line of work! But necessary, we need people who can stomach facing devils, yes? To me, such people are like society's exorcists, making sure these demons don't keep harming others."

"Yes, that's pretty much it," Mycroft said, but she was still distracted by the dazzle of that necklace, the glitter of it so mesmerizing she couldn't properly focus and pull her usual game. She wasn't always so unbalanced when presented with a prize like this, she should be gently easing the conversation into talk of lakeside properties and the boredom of servants who are often absent leaving the house and its safe open to anyone who knew how to get past the front door's security lock. How lovely it would be to relax under a Tuscan sun for a few days! And then would come the sudden invitation and the surprise when Mycroft took her up on the offer, and before the Duchess and her brother knew it, she'd become a close friend who holidayed with her fiancee on that lakeside shore, for it would be such a relief for those of likewise preferences to be able to relax in camaraderie with the Duchess's lonely brother.

That would have been the usual tactic, but for an inexplicable reason Mycroft found herself spitting out, "She's been investigating corpses being used for sex. Someone tried to import corpses from China and there was a necrophilia ring run by a former pair of sex traffickers. You know those human body exhibits that museums are so fond of these days?"

The Duchess and her brother gave her an uncomfortable nod.

"Well, these creeps ordered them from the plastination factory where they make them, a place based in China. Necrotutes, as the coroner called them. And here robotic sex dolls are supposed to fill in that objectionable gap, but of course, someone always has to claim that organic is best, I suppose."

She could see the horror in the Duchess's face mirrored on her brother, and Mycroft had to wonder just what had gotten into her to even reveal this vile portion of Grace's terrible work. Where was Grace, anyway? She'd taken off after some minor tiff about her decorum and Mycroft hoped she hadn't left the party, she needed her back to rescue the terrible job she'd made of this newest ruse.

"Mycroft, dear, there you are! You tried to slink off and ignore me, I see. Ah, Lady Josephine , you are positively radiant tonight! How do you make your skin glow like that? And this must be your brother, the Count of Alba, how very good it is to meet you." Her soft smile was met with relieved ones reflected back. "I see you've met my daughter, Mycroft Holmes, please pay her no mind, she's a bit of a Lady In Waiting for me these days, I'm afraid. I am the Dowager Duchess, Victoria Holmes, I reside at Paisley Cottage."

Tinkling smiles and jewellery made merry at this. "Oh yes, my brother and I are familiar with that area! Beautiful hiking spots up there beyond the hill, and the only paparazzi you find are wayward sheep."

Victoria Holmes laughed at this. "Yes, they do have that same blank hopefulness, don't they? You must come and visit sometime, you and your brother can be free to ramble about up there as much as you like."

Oh no! No, no, no this won't do! For if a visit is secured at Paisley Cottage, it meant that they would well know they'd be roughing it, and thus no jewels and only overpriced hiking gear that was wholly unnecessary for those public paths. She'd never get her hands on that necklace!

"It would be a lovely change of scenery from our villa in Spain," the Duchess of Bala said. Mycroft made an inward note, not a Tuscan shore, then, but one just off of Madrid. "It's not as big as our last home in Tuscany, but the view of the ocean is spectacular. We have been feeling a bit bored of it lately, however, especially since that section of Madrid doesn't offer much privacy."

"One has to choose one's servants carefully," Victoria sagely said. Mycroft gave her a glare at this, but her mother was perfectly at ease with this form of blatant fishing.

"Do we ever!" the Duchess's brother exclaimed, his dark eyes wide in pique. "Most of the time they aren't even at the house when go away, they decide that means they get a vacation too. There's many a time we've gone home to find the front door unlocked and not a person in the place! It's a wonder we aren't overrun with vagrants every time we go abroad!"

"How very irresponsible," Victoria said, genuinely sympathetic to their predicament. "Madrid is hardly what one would call a 'safe' city for someone to do that sort of thing."

"In all fairness, the villa isn't in Madrid proper," the Duchess further explained. "It's in Menorca, a little harbour about two hours away from the closest city. There's very few people who live in that area, or even know about it for that matter. It's tucked away between a couple of cliffs and is only accessible by a ferry that runs twice a week. When we leave it we have to schedule our exit carefully, or make a deal with the local fisherman to get us to the main shore."

"But please, if we could keep that between ourselves," her brother added. "We purchased that property solely for its privacy, and we'd hate for word to get out about it."

How fortuitous! It was truly amazing what having a stout, overly chatty old woman with genteel airs in the mix could do to wrangle that sort of secretive information out. Mycroft carefully went over every word, memorizing the data that she would then investigate on her cell phone at first opportunity, as a good hunt through Google Maps would do the trick. Getting access would be a bit of bother, but since they were keen to go rambling around her mother's ramshackle estate, she could use that opportunity to visit the abandoned villa and thus its safe holding the precious jewels that were now shining like beacons into Mycroft's soul. They were really were excellently crafted, enough to blind a person should the light catch it just right.

As for masking her visit and deflecting suspicion, all it would take would be a quick call to a few gossip rags and the paparazzi would show up like an invading army and Victoria Holmes could take the fall for revealing their secret. It was the least the old bat could do.

Flashing bulbs caught the Duchess and her brother in their piercing halos and with her mother still gently chatting with them, Mycroft slunk away as journalists surrounded the brother and sister, begging for quality poses and front page gossip. "Is it true that you've been seen in the company of the Countess of Portugal?" an unknown journalist asked the Duchess's brother, and he smiled with his too white teeth and gave them a shrug that was supposed to be interpreted as "Yes, by all means, I am a straight man seeing a very attractive, rich straight woman. Print that, please."

Mycroft now rode on a high of discovery, all of her plans coming to a rich fruition despite her own stumble. To think it was her horrible mother who corrected the situation! She still didn't want to talk to the woman or have any association, but she would be a fool not to admit she had been useful this evening. Mycroft scanned the crowd in the garden for evidence of Grace and couldn't find her. She wanted to celebrate, and simple champagne and the cheese encrusted canapes that she couldn't eat wouldn't at all do. Why had Grace stormed off? Mycroft frowned, wondering if it was something to do with telling her not to talk about her work, and this nagged at her as she found herself drifting away from the party into a darker section of the grounds until she found herself on the steps of the decrepit church. One of the new stained glass windows was broken, and the outside facade was as crumbled as ever. She was reminded of her brother's apartment block, the feeling of decay and neglect as permeating as a grave.

"They fumigated the bees," she heard the vicar say. The amber tip of his cigarette was a subversive beacon to the entrance of the small church. "Totally unnecessary since there aren't any flowering bushes around this section of the property and their garden is going to suffer next year. They'll have to import a new queen and get a new pollinating army set up anyway. I guess it was a gesture to make sure I didn't sue, but one could argue that being stung was an act of God. Especially considering how that sham of a marriage turned out." He took another long drag of his cigarette and pulled it from it from his lips to inspect it in the dark. "You'd think they'd give me some quality skunk instead as proper recompense. But the happy couple aren't here, are they, and this weird little baby shower of theirs is a cover up for the fact that their daughter went rogue with not only a commoner but a vicious drug dealer."

"My, how times have changed," Mycroft observed.

"Not really. He's got money, this new boyfriend, and that's all that counts to these people in the end. How do you like my new fancy window?" He gestured with his cigarette at the broken glass. "A tree branch did it in during a windstorm. I'd say that's some Divine Opinion on the redecorating, if you ask me."

Mycroft grinned and journeyed further up the church steps, her heels placed carefully on the crumbling rock. "Too many prime colours for my liking."

"Is that why you didn't pilfer the alter, like I'd requested you to do?" The vicar finished his cigarette and tossed it into a neatly trimmed hedge, the roots littered with them. "The insurance could have paid for the new roof. I'm very disappointed in your lack of charitable thievery."

"Thou shalt not," Mycroft reminded him.

"Depends on the type of thievery in this case. I'd say neglect of one's historical responsibility is a big form of stealing from the poor to benefit the rich. There's talk they want to tear this church down and build an atrium in its place, to take over the grounds completely and eradicate the shared space. The new son-in-law has a medical marijuana scheme he wants to get off the ground and you can count on it that Dear Madame is smelling profit." He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and threatened to light another one, only to put it back into the inside pocket of his black vest. "I'm trying to cut back. Been chain smoking these for too long, they're starting to catch up to my lungs."

"Surely they can't evict you?" Mycroft asked. It seemed odd that a historic building like this would be brought to ruin when Mrs. Hudson's slum was still standing and full of tenants.

"Arthur Billingsworth III is quite upset about the whole scheme, he's the only one on my side. I swear he's got some kind of secret investment in the place, there's all kinds of nooks and crannies in here I've never had access to. One of them is the locked cellar, down past the altar, which is one of the reasons I'd hoped you'd have taken me up on my offer of open theft. I can't be the one to break in and investigate, a broken lock would obviously be my fault."

Mycroft mulled over this information. In her experience a secreted away locked cellar usually meant someone was squirreling away illegally obtained riches and considering the eclectic ugliness of the Billingsworth art collection in the house it stood to reason there were more such artefacts hidden within the cellar of the church. "You've never been in the cellar of this place at all?"

"I can show you the door. It's padlocked as though the devil himself were being held prisoner there."

Well, that was curious, for there was nothing that piqued the Blue Danube's interest more than a padlocked room full of family secrets, and hopefully it was of the glittering mineral variety and not the kind that was more useful for blackmail. She had no interest in the latter commodity and though her safe cracking had led to some rather unpleasant understandings of her wealthy victims, she'd never used any of it against them. For Mycroft, the safe was like a confessional. The only secrets she stole were open ones.

As for Arthur Billingsworth III, she was confident she could predict his movements as easily as she could define the flow of a babbling brook. "I know exactly where the key to that lock is," she said to the vicar, a sense of benign disappointment overtaking her. For if there truly were valuables strewn about in that dark, centuries old basement the lock would be safely hidden away in the safe upstairs, the ugly painting of a yellow tinged battleship protecting it. As it was, the shape and rust of the piece of bulky iron was currently hanging on an equally ancient nail near the back door of the pantry, an entrance she'd used to putter her way through Georgia House when the Billingsworths were on holiday in France and the servants took a likewise relief leave.

She gave the vicar a knowing wink. "I'll get the key."

He frowned at her audacity. "How on earth will you find it?"

She bit her bottom lip and briefly wondered if he'd chide her for her blasphemy. "The Good Lord will show me the way."

But instead, the vicar frowned deeper at this, as though she were tempting a truth that might be just too much for either of them to handle. "If He does, it won't be for your greed, or that of this church. Be careful, Mycroft Holmes. There's devils all over this place."

She took heed to his warning and slunk off, back to Georgia House, but with a sharp right hand detour towards the kitchens and the near forgotten pantry near its back exit. The servants still arrived through a narrow back door and all the basic running of the house was secreted away in a dingy relief, in oppressive contrast to the ornate main entrance where visitors were presented with a manor worthy of being called a palace. None of the guests strayed to this area, and she avoided detection by the various servants who stood outside in the dim darkness of this section of the house, cigarette smoke mingling with the hundreds years old tradition of others who had a likewise habit throughout the generations.

"The stink of him! He makes me sick!" A pretty little maid dressed all in black looked like a sliver of coal in the darkness, her male companion in equal costume. "And the way he always tries to cop a feel on our bottoms, he's such a creep!"

"I've always found it useful to stand upwind when talking to him. His breath gets carried off and away. Can't say I have much experience with the hands, though, but he's looking for a punch up or worse one of these days if he keeps it up."

"He ought to get himself one of those robotic proxies, he can manhandle that all he wants."

Her male companion laughed. "I wouldn't doubt he has one. Sally was pretty adamant that things were weird here, her dear old dad included. Even though we worked under this roof, we didn't see the half of what went on, which makes me wonder because I've certainly witnessed that old bitch slap Sally around more than once."

"You've been here longer than me," the female servant conceded. "Dear Madame is a horror show. The way she picked at Sally was outright abuse. I know it well enough from my own experience, and I don't talk to my gran anymore on account of it." She cocked her head to one side. "Sally does know this stupid party is in her honour, or what's left of it,right?"

"Dunno. She's holed up with that gangbanger in Brighton, the one I told you about. The guy works for some big cartel based out of Hungary. Pretty sure he's one of their heavies, and he's shed some blood for them. Real bad piece of work all over, if you ask me. I won't be calling round to her anymore, glad she got out of here, but I'm not sure it was to something better."

The ominous conversation ended with a bark from Dear Madame who shouted at them from the confines of the kitchen, the windows open to allow in a decent breeze over the hot stoves that continued to churn out meals. When the area was fully abandoned, Mycroft crept out from her hiding place behind the pile of wood that had once been a small stable a few hundred years ago. The pantry was in her direct line of sight and she cursed herself for wearing too light an ensemble, enough to reflect moonlight and offer anyone a good look at her antics if they'd happen to glance in this direction. But the party wasn't here, and the servants were now too busy serving up the buffet styled main course to waste time in gossip, the various distractions serving Mycroft as she got to work.

She found the key on the rusted hook with ease and pocketed it quickly.

"Mycroft!"

She swallowed back her heart, which was now wedged deep in her throat, and she turned to see her mother, which did not offer her any feeling of relief whatsoever. "What are you doing back here? This is the servant area."

"I was going to ask you the same thing," her mother snapped. "You always were one to go traipsing off to socialize with the rabble. I'm here to catch some air."

Mycroft, however, knew this was a lie, for her mother loved claustrophobic rooms and air stale enough to make a canary gasp. "Lies."

"Can a person not enjoy the country breeze at midnight?"

"Only when you're stuck in an enclosed room surrounded by tarnished silverware, what are you after, mother?"

"Nothing."

She noted the way her mother glanced over her shoulder, towards the far end of the house where a young girl of seventeen had been given the task of taking and guarding excess clothing, shawls, purses and suit jackets, all under her rather inexpert care. "Have you been going into the coat check?" Mycroft felt a growing sense of horror wield itself within her gut. "Oh, you thoughtless cow, you're pilfering pockets!"

"The last horse cleared me out and Sherlock told me you aren't giving me any more money for investment."

"You're a remorseless gambler, Mother, don't you dare to try call what you do an asset, if you had your way you would see me in ruins and yourself in rags if you could! Money is nothing but mist in your hands, it dissipates before you can even clutch it!" Mycroft placed her hands on her hips, refusing to let her mother pass her and journey back to the party. "You are putting what you found back into those purses and pockets, do you understand me?"

"No one carries cash these days except for drugs," Victoria Holmes bitterly complained. "All I found were roofies, molly and packets of cocaine."

"Serves you right," Mycroft admonished her. She shoved her mother towards the garden and the party now in full swing on the cobblestones beneath layers of golden lights. "Go back to the party and suck up to Dear Madame if you're so needful of money. I'm sure your mention of sitting next to the Queen will be enough to get her to take you to the track on a regular basis."

"All I need is a hundred pounds," her mother complained.

"Not one dime from me. You're lucky I'm even willing to stand here next to you."

Victoria Holmes's eyes were suddenly hard. "You need to attach forgiveness to yourself, Mycroft. This sort of anger eats away at the moral fibre of a person. Where is Grace Lestrade? She made quite an exit, the Princess of Ethiopia is still talking about it. There's already rumours circulating that you are suddenly single."

With that nail hammered deep in place, Dowager Duchess Victoria Holmes of Paisley Cottage left her daughter to return to the party. Mycroft clutched the large iron key in her pocket, her palms sweating around the circular head. The vicar was still standing on the front steps of the church, his lit cigarette an ember that punctuated the black gloom.

She took two steps to head back to him only to smack hard into the chest of Arthur Billingsworth III. "Oh my!" he said, clutching her shoulders. She shook off his touch with a shiver, which she masked with a forced, genial smile. "Sorry about that. Bad eyesight in the dark, you know. Glaucoma."

His breath nearly knocked her over and she placed a delicate hand at her mouth and over her nose to avoid it. "The party is a success, I think. Lots of photo ops and generous donations to the latest drug treatment centre, as you were hoping for."

"Yes." Billingsworth looked distracted as he gazed back at the crowd. "It's all a bit much for me, I'm afraid. This is my wife's doing, I have no love of parties, as you know." He gave her a lopsided grin, which on another man would be charming. Yellow and green molars were revealed, and Mycroft's answering smile was strained. What was it with gentry and their inability to see a dentist? It's not like Billingsworth couldn't afford it.

"What are you doing so far away from the party?" Billingsworth asked. "There's only junk back here. I've been meaning to clear off that pile of wood, use it for kindling and make a proper pyre." He gave his house a baleful once over as though wishing he could set the whole thing alight as well. "You didn't tell me you were the comfortable shoes sort. This modern world, it's so hard to keep up with it."

Mycroft couldn't stop the sigh from escaping her. These people and their comfort, how irritating they were in their Victorian selfishness, wrapping themselves up in their isolation and keeping the greater world beyond away. A chilled breeze cut between them and Mycroft instinctively folded her arms across her chest, the awkward moment between them refusing to leave. She finally just shook her head and began her descent down the hill towards the church, leaving Arthur behind in the silence, a puzzled frown on his brow that she hoped would remain there for the rest of his miserable, lonely life.

Where was Grace? Surely, she hadn't been abandoned?

Her steps were unladylike and heavy as she trudged through the grass to the church where the vicar was still waiting, her heels digging into the mud and the hem of her Anne Klein pale grey silk and chiffon pantsuit, $2,346.98 now grass stained and splattered with muck. The vicar tossed his cigarette to meet the others at the roots of the bush at the base of the steps. His eyes went wide when Mycroft brandished the large iron key that had likewise stained the inside of her silk trouser pocket. "Piece of cake," she said.

"Blimey, you are a right Robin Hood. Come on, I been waiting two years to get into that basement and see what's what down there!"

There was a rustling behind them, and Mycroft cast a worried glance over her shoulder, at first wondering if it was Grace, finally come to find her at last. But the night's shadows were absorbed by the thick foliage of trees and bushes that surrounded the church and she couldn't discern a familiar figure within them.

"Are you looking for someone?" the vicar asked.

"No, I guess not," Mycroft said, and she sighed with deep disappointment as they went into the church together.

She realized she hadn't seen much of the interior during her last visit, and its natural charm and disrepair had been neatly hidden by the vast amount of flower decorations for the wedding. The church was very spare with ancient pews that were now weathered by age and woodworms, the peat roof was equally worn and open in patches, revealing small circles of stars beyond it. Plastic red buckets to collect water during rain were scattered across the stone floors of the church. The stained glass windows were oddly garish and out of place for the more Calvinist architecture, the church having been built for spiritual purpose in mind and not a reflection of its material wealth.

She followed the vicar to the far end, past the altar and into the enclave, which led to small corridor where his lodging and an office with a laptop humming on a desk illuminated the tiny corridor. "It's through here," he said, and she passed the two rooms, the vicar's black clad figure walking with resolute purpose towards a short, oak door with ornate ironwork hinges and an imposing looking lock. He shook the key she had given him and slid it into place, his pale, freckled hands near shaking in eager anticipation.

Mycroft held back, unsure.

"Come on," he said, turning the key in the lock and opening the oak door. It creaked slightly on those ancient hinges, but they were well oiled, and thus quieter than she would have expected.

Why were there no cobwebs?

Why did those black hinges glisten so, as though they were well used?

"I don't think we should go in there after all," Mycroft insisted, but the vicar shook his head at her folly.

"Don't be silly, we've come this far! I know for a fact you aren't the sort to believe in ghosts, and if there are any here, you've got the proper sort of company to exorcise them! Bell, book and candle, I've got it all sorted!"

He headed in without her, the echoes of his steps heading downwards reaching back to pull her in, the vicar's excited gasps of discovery riding along each stone descent. "This cellar has to predate this church, these wall sconces were used in the seventeenth century. Good Lord, this is *ancient*, you've got to see this!"

Mycroft placed her hand on the curved top of the door and crouched low, still not quite convinced she should follow him. "Do you see anything interesting?"

"I have to turn on the torch on my phone, hold on." The cellar stairs were suddenly illuminated into a dull grey, the light sweeping back and forth. "It's a fairly large area down here, not too many nooks and crannies. Lots of old bits of paper and I think that's an ink well and a desk. There's an old Bible down here, open halfway." She could hear the creak of wooden furniture as the vicar moved what sounded like a chair across a stone floor. She pulled the door open further, and dared to place one foot on the grey stone steps.

"I think this used to be a monastery. Holy shit, that's one old Good Book! It's only halfway transcribed, the mediaeval monk who worked on it must have been interrupted...Crikey, it's well kept for a place that's been abandoned this long, it feels so clean, like it's been freshly swept." The vicar let out a huff of confusion. "Hunh. And there it is."

"There's what?" Mycroft shouted down.

"A bloody plastic broom." There was a pregnant pause after this. "Someone else has come down here."

Mycroft felt a shiver of ice run along the base of her neck and down the length of her spine. "I think you should get out of there. Now."

"There's another door here," the vicar said, ignoring her. "I just want to take a look..."

"Don't," Mycroft pleaded.

But she heard the creak of the door opening. She could feel the horrified emotion of the vicar suddenly wafting up the stairs like the most terrible smell she had ever encountered, the foulness of it enough to make her reel. "Get out of there!" she shouted down the stone steps.

"Holy fucking shit!" she heard the vicar exclaim.

Some things are meant to be locked away forever.

Strong hands pushed her from behind and Mycroft went tumbling down the stairs and into the black abyss of the ancient cellar and its incomplete Bible, the back of her head hitting the bottom step. There was a flicker of light beside her, and she swore she saw what looked like a formal dinner table, complete with candlelight and a happy family gathered around it, white Christmas lights making the scene a domestic miracle. But it was odd the way no one moved, the way the light caught on hinges . The musty smell of cured leather permeated the underground space.

"Miss Holmes!" she heard the vicar shout, and then there was a second shadow and then a thud and he fell to the ground beside her, a nasty gash on the side of his head bleeding onto the grey dust of the stone floor.

There was a treasure here, but it was not of the sort she was meant to steal, nor bear witness to. Her eyes fluttered shut into the resulting silence. Her last conscious thought was that Grace was angry with her, that Grace wouldn't find her and that she was now locked away, a blue diamond in an abandoned safe.

 

 


	9. dowagers and detectives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace can't find Mycroft. Victoria Holmes and Grand Theft Auto. Powell becomes an unlikely ally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONE MORE CHAPTER LEFT!!

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter nine

Snotty cow.

Would serve her right if she never talked to her again, this was all her fault, she knew damned well how much she detested fancy dress of any sort and to be plunked in here, like some fin damaged goldfish, it all smacked of Mycroft's ego and not at all of care. Grace huffed as she pushed her way through the crowd of people, her scowl easing the way. The nerve of that bitch! As if she could just turn on a switch and become another person, one who didn't brood on the dead and worry about the particulars of their last movements with all the precise measurement of a chemist! She had her own quirks and well did Mycroft know them and to chastise her about them now, when wandering blind in Mycroft's element, well, it wasn't just the height of rude it was an unrealistic expectation! The bloody nerve of her!

Grace stormed her way to the front door and then, realizing she was still a prisoner to propriety, she veered off to the right where a small sitting room had been converted to a professional looking coat check, complete with a young female concierge who was probably eighteen but looked all of twelve years old. She gave her the stub she'd been wrinkling in her trouser pocket and was given a curt nod as the young woman disappeared from the large desk shoved in front of the door and into the recesses of the room. A single lamp illuminated the space within and Grace stared at the various shadows as she blankly waited for her long faux leather jacket to be found and delivered. It was a trench coat type, too warm for this time of year, but Mycroft liked the way the burgundy leather played off against Grace's skin and the silk blouse with its straining pearls at her bosom beneath it, the gentle curve of the waist giving her a more hourglass shape than a pudgy one. She'd allowed Mycroft to dress her up a little, and perhaps it was harsh of Grace to accuse her of wanting to change everything about her for after all she had allowed that small interference. Stood to reason Mycroft would take more liberties in other areas. Like a little tweaking on her personality.

'Ridiculous', Grace chided herself. 'You are creating this conflict, making it more than it is. She's in the midst of her Great Game and you just trod on the hem of it and discovered you don't like it. This is why she separates this life from yours. Powell is here and she's the Blue Danube and you can't turn off your copper's instincts for even a second to keep her from discovery. You're a bloody fool, Grace Lestrade, you put her on edge and her answer to you was flippancy.'

Maybe. Or maybe Mycroft was being just as stubborn and selfish in her own skin to not afford Grace any slack when her own was fitting too tight. Even now, with the way the shadows moved, Grace was still viewing the world with concentrated suspicion, and she could tell that the young coat girl was not alone in that room, that there was a shorter woman with her, and she could hear the rustling of keys and change as quick fingers went coursing through pockets. You can't ask a cat to become a dog any more than you can ask a cop to become an ordinary citizen. Grace carefully watched past the coat girl's shoulders to the darting figure behind her, a flash of yellow glass catching Grace's eye. The Duchess Victoria Holmes, fleeing the scene of her crime.

Grace was taken aback at this and she flinched as the coat check girl handed her the burgundy leather trench coat, the fancy label in it from some couture designer in France caught the girl's eye in youthful longing. "It's absolutely beautiful," the young girl gushed, but Grace could care less about it. Facts more than fashion took all of Grace's attention at present. Victoria Holmes had been hiding in the coat check--Whatever for?

She got her answer when she slung the coat on and rummaged in the deep pockets for her car keys and wallet and found both missing. The reckless old bint! Grace could only watch, helpless, as Victoria Holmes shuffled quickly away, catching her eye with a surprised little moue of distress and then her stocky, yellow form darting out of the cloak room and into the crowd of people gathered at the back garden doors. The apple didn't fall far, it seemed, though it was clear that Victoria Holmes was the bruised Macintosh to Mycroft's Golden.

Perhaps the old bitch was more rotten, Grace thought. Mycroft's snobbish attitude was often amplified around the woman, though their history was a strained one. Sherlock had let out hints of Mycroft's childhood and it was hardly a pleasant one, the effect of it leaving Mycroft a homeless runaway by the time she was eighteen. The details were sketchy, but Grace got the basic components, namely the catalyst being a wealthy patron who had taken an interest in Mycroft, one that was wholly one-sided and a forced marriage for money was set to take place. It was still unknown if the man took liberties with Mycroft before the actual nuptials and this was what forced her to escape Paisley Cottage, and Grace didn't like entertaining that as fact. Mycroft had always been a willing accomplice in her bed, and often instigated lovemaking, and none of it held a hint of past abuse within it. But who was she to say? That was Mycroft's narrative, not her own, and the woman was very good at hiding unpleasant things, one of which was the Dowager Duchess Victoria Holmes. She hadn't even met the harpy until a year ago, by accident in a box store selling discounted high end designer wear, and every meeting since had been an escalating scale of intolerance.

"You remind her of her losses," Mycroft cheerfully explained one night, over a glass of glittering pale gold champagne. Grace couldn't remember what they were celebrating, but one didn't need much of an excuse to break out the bubbly in Mycroft's presence. "You are, to her, low born and common, too close to the realities of the world and the harsh sting of survival. Don't listen to her. She has been made stupid by money."

Mycroft, with her long limbs and thin, wide smile, her gaze glittering with champagne and mischief, her long neck offered in graceful submission, beckoned Grace closer to the entrance of her bedroom. "I would rather be made stupid by you, my dear Detective."

"I've been known to drop a woman's IQ by a few points thanks to some physical exertion. I do recall I've made you forget the ability to speak a few times."

"That you have." Mycroft kissed her, a soft, delicate tongue teasing out the passion that lurked within. "I don't feel like talking right now, in fact. Truly, Detective Lestrade, I am looking forward to going mute."

Grace had grinned at this. "Oh, you won't be mute, love."

Mycroft's head dipped in secretive understanding. "No. I don't expect that I will be."

The memory was jarred by the incessant buzzing of her cell phone and Grace took it out of her faux leather jacket pocket, cursing. It was Manny, calling to see how the night was going. "I heard Powell was going to be there and figured I'd give you a heads up."

"Too late. He cornered me at the punch bowl, which damn near lived up to its name as a result." Grace moved deeper into the crowd, searching out Victoria Holmes, who still had her car keys. "Were you able to find any of Moonflower's family?"

"Sure did. That friend of Sherlock's even gave me a contact address to her aunt in the Ukraine. Her real name was Svatlana Jovovich. She was only eighteen when she left the Ukraine to come here. Her parents died the year before, in a tractor accident, and she didn't have any family other than the aunt left. Poor kid." Manny sighed. "I suppose Mycroft is looking as gorgeous as ever in her high couture. I want exclusive non-paparazzi candid shots!"

Grace caught a glimpse of bright yellow in the crowd and tried to follow it, the stout form of Victoria Holmes a weird imperfection among the polished elite that had gathered here. "Mycroft and I had a bit of a tiff."

"Say it's not so! Grace, what did you do?"

Grace paused, and thanks to Manny lost her target. "What do you mean what did *I* do? She was a right misery to me, insulting my job, insulting who I am..."

"Oh don't go on about this again."

"What do you mean?"

Manny let out a low groan as Grace leaned against the doors leading into the garden. She noticed the church lights were on in the distance, a blazing beacon of tranquility and comfort that was in gross contrast to the glittering loud melee she was currently in. "You're too sensitive when it comes to talk about your job. Especially when you're stressed about a case. Like now."

Grace had to admit it had been taking up most of her brain space lately, and much as she was loathe to admit it, Mycroft was on the job herself here. Powell's presence had super-sensitized her to any criticism on the subject, and if she really wanted to take a good look at it she would understand that Mycroft was trapped here among the elite with her mother of all people, a horror show of bad memories and haunting flashbacks that Grace still hadn't fully discerned.

The Mycroft she knew was still there, the one who loved animals to the point of shaping a lifestyle around it and stealing dogs from dangerous criminals. Mycroft, who took care of Sherlock's brain damaged best friend, who indulged her pothead brother and made sure he had the basic survival tools for life. Likewise Victoria Holmes who got bailout after bailout until Mycroft simply couldn't afford any more.

She had a habit of taking care of people who didn't deserve it.

"You still there?"

She was now feeling like a pissy bint to be honest, and since she was trapped at this party without her car keys and going home with Mycroft was a much better plan than going back to that crap flat in the East End she figured lurking around for just a little while longer wouldn't be too tortuous. "I'm hanging up, Manny."

"You'd better go and find her and patch this up."

"You should have your own bloody talk show."

"I could call it Chatting With Stiffs. All my special guest stars would be recently deceased celebrities."

"You are sick, Manny."

"You know what would be really cool? Propping them up with a microphone in their oesophagus and replaying old interviews. It'll be a reality TV hit, you watch."

"I've had enough of corpses, especially pretty ones. I want to go home."

"Go find her first. I'll talk to you later."

She pocketed her cell phone and scanned the crowd once again, finding Victoria Holmes bumbling through the assortment of perfection like a well dressed honey bee. An array of thoughts assailed Grace's mind, the pros and cons of Manny's chastisement ringing hollow in Grace's memory. She had to look at facts, like an good copper, and yes, Mycroft had been a real snotty witch, and this was superimposed on the tittering, plastic fake senility of Victoria Holmes, who set Mycroft off into a black mood with a small phone call let alone a protracted visit at a party the old bat had been forbidden to attend. All roads led to the devil when it came to that one.

With a few stealthy steps, Grace managed to snatch Victoria Holmes roughly by the shoulder and spin her around to face her.

The wrinkled shock that met her had deep grooves of foundation and blue eye shadow bleeding into the delicate folds of skin. "I thought you were leaving," she snapped, as though it was Grace who was the unwelcome one here, who was ruining what was otherwise a genteel party of elite specimens who ate on ceramic plates in the garden and never touched a plastic fork in their lives. They didn't get in the habit of breaking champagne glasses, either, a vice Grace's clumsy hands had in spades.

"Car keys," Grace said, holding out her palm.

Victoria Holmes tossed up her chin. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know you took them. Grand theft auto is hardly your style, you can keep the twenty bob I had in my wallet, just give me back the damned car keys so I can get out of here."

"A woman shouldn't have a wallet, that's a man's accessory. A woman of means has no need of anything in her purse save a good lipstick and a credit card."

"I'm a right mean woman, Duchess, those rules don't quite apply to those like me."

"No." She gave Grace a withering once over, taking in the jacket that was now leaving sweat marks beneath her pits and staining her silk blouse. "I don't suppose they do."

Weighing in that Grace's absence was the best option, Victoria Holmes sighed and dug into the rather deep pocket of her swishing, yellow chiffon dress and pulled out a set of jangling keys. Grace inspected them with a feeling of tired resignation.

"These aren't mine."

"Oh for buggerin' sake!"

Victoria Holmes dug into her other pocket and pulled out Grace's set of keys, jangling them in front of her face with all the pique of a seasoned gang member caught with the goods. Grace snatched them from her, fascinated by the way Victoria Holmes morphed, once again, into her Duchess persona, a smooth, rather senile slip that rendered her seemingly harmless. It was easy to see who Mycroft's first teacher was, though she would furiously deny it.

"What are you going to do with car keys? It's not like you can zoom out of here on these posh wheels and not get caught. And how did you get them, anyway, aren't they supposed to be in the possession of the valet right now?"

Victoria Holmes snorted and took a very unladylike gulp of her champagne. "The valet is a friend of Sherlock's, he's a near homeless youth squatting under the staircase in his building. I've got a young fellow waiting in the wings just outside the Georgia House gates who I'll be giving these keys to."

Grace narrowed her eyes. "And I take it this young man waiting for you has no association with Sherlock or his homeless friend, the valet?"

Victoria Holmes's mouth was a taut little line. "No."

"Right." Grace rolled back on her heels, hands in pockets in her usual detective stance when sussing out the bullshit of a suspect. "Because that fellow works for your bookie and these cars are payment for your latest debts. How bad did the horses let you down this time, Victoria?"

She fanned herself with a starched napkin. "It is quite gauche to talk about money, Detective Inspector Lestrade, especially in this company."

Grace rolled her eyes. "You can't let them steal the cars. There's security all over this place and your man is going to get caught and he'll be singing your blues better than John Lee Hooker. Call it off."

Victoria was tight lipped and stubborn. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Of course you don't, but I have to say, that's not the best look of confusion I've ever had a felon give me, you can do better than that. I hope you can keep that up for the hours of interrogation that are going to happen as a result of this. Mycroft can't bail you out of an outright felony. Rethink this. Don't be stupid."

She abandoned Victoria Holmes to her folly, the old woman sipping her champagne and pretending not to stare at her departure with wanton relief. The apple may not fall far, but at least Mycroft knew not to ruin herself over such small gains. She was going to have to tell her what the damned woman was up to so she could create some sort of damage control. Maybe even an open threat to put her in a home might knock some sense into the miserable old cow.

She couldn't find Mycroft, no matter how many small gatherings of inane conversationalists she infiltrated ("Oh, the coast of Paris is lovely this time of year! And you must go to La Chat Rouge on Rue LeFontaine, their pear salad is divine!") and was about to give up completely and wait on her back at home (Belgravia or her own flat? She still wasn't sure which, her feelings were still hurt) only to take a sharp turn around a burgeoning tray full of ice and champagne to avoid colliding with the staggering waiter and ended up nose to nose with Arthur Billingsworth III.

It was the first time Grace had ever met the man, and he was every bit of reedy tweed that Mycroft had described him as. He gave her a mossy smile that made her take a step back, his limpid eyes swimming like grey hued, boiled snails on his choleric face. "Do pardon me," he said, and Grace reeled back, near fainting from the atrocious breath that suddenly assaulted her.

"Have you seen Mycroft Holmes?" Grace asked, and she was not polite enough to simply bear it and not place her arm in front of her mouth as a barrier against his vile halitosis. "I'm Grace Lestrade, her partner, I don't believe we've formally met."

"Of course! Yes. The Detective Inspector Lestrade. Well. Oh, dear me. Dear me, such a...This is unexpected, I must say..." He cleared his throat and this somehow made things worse, for phlegm and bacteria rattled around in that cage, sending a sick film over every word he spoke. "I haven't seen her, which is a shame, but I did see her mother, she's just over there." He pointed in exactly the opposite direction where Grace had been talking to Victoria Holmes, a rather obvious deflection since no one could miss that bright yellow bauble with the way it was now wobbling through the crowd, drunk and unbalanced on small heels.

Arthur Billingsworth III darted towards a glittering fountain surrounded by thick crowds of people, effectively shaking Grace off before she had a chance to interrogate him further about Mycroft's whereabouts. The rush to get away from her seemed odd, but she didn't have time to investigate it too closely for the woman Mycroft referred to only as Dear Madame had put Grace in her unwelcome sights and was now marching resolute towards her. She could see Powell in the distance, still drinking martinis and laughing with the BBC producers who were always on his periphery, a strange sort of in crowd for an investigator, in Grace's opinion. She personally had no love of egotistical display and especially not when it came to the job.

"Have you seen my husband?" Dear Madame quipped, with an authority that suggested Grace was supposed to be responsible for him. She wondered if this woman was so used to bossing people around she no longer realized she did it to guests as well. She sighed, not waiting for an answer, her sharp chin held high as she surveyed the crowd. "He has to make the formal speech in seven minutes, to announce the amount that's been donated, and to make sure the right names are dropped in thanks, and to talk about the new rehabilitation centre it will fund in Soho. Or was it Chelsea? No matter, as long as it's on the books. Nice little tax shelter, really. Of course, charity is the main goal, as our gracious Sally would say. It's the whole purpose of this rushed fiasco, and he's responsible for it and as usual, he drops the entire project into my lap and walks away!"

No longer caring about the laws of decorum, Dear Madame took a cigarette from her purse and lit it, the filter tight against her thin, burgundy painted lips.

"I wanted to divorce him ages ago," she admitted.

Having a commoner in one's midst tended to draw out confessions from her type. Not out of genuine camaraderie, mind, but with the knowledge that someone as low on the totem pole as Grace would have no influence on her social circle.

"But one can't do that without having another prospect in the wings and frankly, I don't have the energy for any more paramours. He can live in his weird bubble at that damned church for the rest of his miserable, twee little life for all I care and I'll keep Georgia House running for as long as I am able. I'm confident in my understanding of my duties. Arthur has always been an unpleasant pill in that regard."

Dear Madame's eagle eyes narrowed on the small church not far from Georgia House. "We're responsible for that, too, though I'm looking forward to tearing it down now that we've convinced the Historical Society that the church doesn't have any true merit. I tried to spruce it up with some half decent stained glass windows but it's not like that vicar appreciates our efforts. An atrium is going in its place, and I can't wait to fill it full of flowers of every variety. It'll be nice to actually enjoy them without worrying a man of the cloth will explode in anaphylactic shock." She waved at the air in front of her as though it were full of insects. "Bees. They nearly did him in during my daughter's wedding, and it's a shame, really, that your friend Mycroft knew how to administer an EpiPen. I suppose it's unkind of me to talk thus, but becoming a corpse out in the open like that, well, it's just not done, is it? I'm glad the church will be rubble soon. The whole structure is a pure nuisance and an unwelcome distraction for Arthur. I can't wait to see it razed to the ground. He'll have no little cellar to hide in, then, it'll finally be a proper place for the dead."

Grace was taken aback by her sudden, vicious candour and it was suddenly more important that she find Mycroft quickly and get her away from this house and its collection of apathetic souls. She frowned as she stared at the church, its lights shining through stained glass windows, an open place that was sorely neglected save for vanity. "The church is a part of the grounds of Georgia House, then?"

"It has been for centuries. Arthur is incensed over my plans to have it demolished, and he is doing what he can to go against my wishes, but the Historical Society has given me my out."

"He goes there often? Is he close friends with the vicar?"

"Not friends with him, no. But he's got a few art pieces locked away in the cellar of the church, he's quite an eclectic collector as you've no doubt noticed. Mostly post-modern trash, if you ask me. All decay and nonsense."

Decay.

Grace felt ill, a wave of understanding washing over her that left her sense of reality in the glittering garden of Georgia House reeling. Arthur Billingsworth III was an avid art collector, the strange pieces that didn't match up a mess of overpriced junk within his front foyer and throughout the house. And yet, there was a certain theme underlying it all, the idea that decay and chaos were intertwined, that there was a battle happening between what was modern and what was ancient. "A war," Grace thought. "Arthur Billingsworth III is fighting off an enemy, and that foe is modernity against tradition. He's fighting off the corrosion of his beliefs. He's battling rot."

Fragments of information began to coalesce quickly and Grace shut her eyes against the onslaught of it, the obvious conclusions hitting the inside of her skull like a shattering beacon. "Anastasia said the buyer had really bad breath," LiPing Xao had told her.

Grace grabbed Dear Madame by the shoulders, ignoring the way the woman flinched and gave her a shocked, dirty look at the touch. "You must tell me, is your husband a very religious man?"

Dear Madame scoffed at this. "Oh please, he barely knows how to mumble his way through a hymn. But he is fond of tradition and a church is a part of that. It's where a body is supposed to go the relieve their soul. I suppose that's what his visits there are about. The vicar told me he shows up for the Sunday sermons but he usually veers off halfway through to go to his cellar collection he has locked up in there. It's a bit of a sore spot for the vicar, he doesn't like a house of God being used as a second closet and he doesn't like being forbidden to go into areas of his own church. I can't blame him, though he has to keep in mind that the church *is* our property first, and God second."

"That artwork..." Grace swallowed back the bile that was threatening to overtake her. "Mrs. Billingsworth, I must know, did your husband make any large purchases from China recently?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "The usual mess, I suppose. He ordered a series of vases, a bit out of his norm, and they arrived broken. He never got his money back, the fool, and it wasn't the first time." Dear Madame's face suddenly erupted into a wide, unpleasant, grin. She reminded Grace of Sherlock's landlady, Mrs. Hudson, only without the pinched hunch to her shoulders as though hiding in plain sight. "Victoria! Be a dear and tell Arthur we are expecting his speech!"

"I don't suppose you've seen Mycroft Holmes anywhere either, have you?" Grace asked, and Dear Madame pushed past her, irritated.

"She went to visit that damned vicar, I saw her sharing a cigarette with him on the steps not long ago. She really should watch her company more carefully."

Grace wasn't about to muddle through the strange pecking order that was high society connections. She pulled out her cell phone and called Wilcox, flashing her badge at the same time. "I know who the buyer of the bodies is."

"Grace," Wilcox sounded like he'd been awoken from a deep sleep. "Aren't you at that fancy dress ball whatsit?"

"At Georgia House. I need backup here, I think Mycroft is in danger!"

"What's going on, Grace?"

"I'm about to find out. Just send a couple of cars, as soon as you can. I'll nab Powell and get him to help me." She hung up before Wilcox could sputter out how bad an idea *that* was, and headed for the fountain, her badge held high in her hand. "Police! Everyone, I need you clear the area immediately, please get back into the house! I repeat, this is not a twee request this is police business, get back into the house!"

Confused, sparkling guests and equally shiny flutes of champagne followed the murmuring crowd as they slowly seeped back into the main foyer of Georgia House. Dear Madame was infuriated and spat a few curse words in Grace's honour. "How dare you ruin this evening! Mycroft will never be at my door again, I can assure you, bringing this sort of rabble here!"

"I'm sure your new son-in-law would appreciate the irony, back into the house, Ma'am."

There was still no sign of Arthur Billingsworth III and when Powell snuck up behind Grace she damned near throttled him with the heel of her extended club. "What's all this about, Grace? There are other, quieter and more profitable ways to draw attention to oneself."

"This isn't a pissing contest Powell, I've got backup coming, and in the meantime I need your help."

Powell was shocked at this. "What are you on about, Grace Lestrade?"

"Take all the damn credit you want with the BBC, go ahead and ram your ego through to the upper management, I don't give a shit! What matters now is that Mycroft is missing and I got a sick ass bastard on the loose who may have done her harm!" She grabbed Powell by the arm and forced him to look her in the eye. "Arthur Billingsworth III is the buyer of the corpses. His wife already confirmed he made several purchases from China recently, 'damaged vases' according to her, though it seems to have happened several times. He has a secret hideaway in the cellar of that church Both Mycroft and the vicar were last seen on the church steps, but there's no sign of them now!"

Powell shrugged. "Have you inspected the church yet?"

"No. I lost sight of Arthur Billingsworth, and he was bloody nervous when I asked when he'd last seen Mycroft. He's not in the crowd in the foyer, either, and he's hardly a Mensa champion when it comes to villainy. He'll go where he's most comfortable, and that is the cellar of the church!"

"He could have just drove off," Powell offered. "I saw a few cars leaving earlier."

That bloody cow! Grace bit the inside of her cheek wondering if she should betray Victoria Holmes for grand theft auto. She figured she'd let it slide for now, it wasn't like the absent son-in-law and daughter didn't have a few ins when it came to that sort of prank. "I'm doing the best I can here. I don't think he's left. I need you to help me check out that church. I have to find Mycroft."

Powell let out a small laugh, his little rat face crinkled in mirth. "I don't have any problem with you making a fool of yourself." Flashing lights swam across the Georgia House grounds and Grace felt a minuscule measure of relief. "The back up is here, they can watch the crowd. I'll give them the instruction to look for Arthur Billingsworth III within it, and to not let anyone leave. I hope for your sake you're right about this Grace, because this is not the kind of crowd that takes lightly being shuffled about by the commoners. You can expect a lawsuit or two, heavy complaints that won't look good on your record."

"I could care less about what looks good," Grace snapped. "Just get that house secured."

She left Powell behind as she crept towards the church, his weasel tones echoing across the crowd as he begged of their forgiveness but there was an important police investigation underway. That he was going to use this as a career stepping point and that Grace had handed it to him was a given, but that didn't matter now, what mattered was getting to Mycroft and making sure she was safe.

She paused on the front steps of the church, and pressed her body flush against the door, listening for any signs of life. The lights were on, a kaleidoscope of colour leeching from the new stained glass windows which depicted pastoral scenes rather than ones from the Bible. The place was mired in blasphemy, Grace thought. Her staunchly Catholic mother would fervently disapprove.

Still, there was something odd about these scenes and the more Grace inspected them, the more it became clear that no, they weren't simple village pictures with houses and pleasant daily routines. There were bodies, grey and deformed within the mix. Decay and rot. She stepped away from the main door to get a better look and was met with a massive tome in glass and lead depicting the suffering of the masses during a plague. If it was specifically the Black Death, Grace couldn't tell, but the theme was definitely Arthur Billingsworth III inspired.

Grace's heart felt cold. She opened the front door of the church and shouted into it. "Mycroft! Mycroft are you here?"

Empty pews and dust met her, a feeling of overwhelming decay and abandonment permeating the sacred space. She carefully inched her way down the central aisle, the red carpet beneath her feet worn to fibres in large patches, the heels of her nice shoes getting caught in them. She shook them off and approached the altar, the image of suffering offering no redemption for those who came here.

She offered up a prayer anyway, despite the setting and how wrong it was and how her mother would insist this devil's playground was no place for such hopes. She'd be telling Grace how fitting it was that she was here, in this Godless enclave, that her lifestyle and pride in her sins had at last tackled her to the ground to take her home to Hell.

Grace was mesmerized by the lit candles gathered on either side of the altar. A fountain of holy water was tucked near the back, where a door was propped half open, leading to the vicar's office. "Fuck you, neither God or the devil has anything to do with this shit," Grace muttered at the memory of her mother. "Besides, this is a protestant church. They don't have near enough candles for your liking. You always did like to burn things."

"Who are you talking to?"

She whirled around, ready to strike, but it was only Powell, his little weasel body looking even smaller in the imposing spiritual space. She relaxed and gestured to the inside of the empty church. "This place doesn't get much use, there's not much of a congregation here. Mrs. Billingsworth stated that her husband has a cellar he uses here, but I haven't found any trap doors in the floorboards. The floor is dirt, there's no foundation in this section." She brought her voice to a low whisper and nodded towards the half open door at the back of the altar. "I'm suspecting it's in the back, where the vicar resides."

Powell was still unconvinced. "This could all be silly lies told by a miserable woman who hates her husband. Maybe Arthur Billingsworth III came here regularly to gain some spiritual strength. I know I would if I had to live with a nasty harpy like that."

"Has this family struck you as the religious type?" Grace bid him to inspect the stained glass windows lining the walls from floor to ceiling. "Those are brand new, donated by the Billingsworths, and I don't see any Sunday school stories in those images, do you?"

Powell squinted as he looked them over, his face going pale. "Well, I'll be. It's all a tad demonic, isn't it? Lots of death and mayhem. But you'd expect that with these old churches, the whole gothic mind set." He made a disgusted face. "Is that a pile of fermenting rats in that one?"

A scuttling sound echoed down the back of the altar, and both Grace and Powell froze in place. Exchanging looks, Grace made a motion suggesting she was going in first, while Powell inched reluctantly behind her. They both crept along the steps of the altar, and through the half open door leading to the vicar's enclave. It was a messy closet of a room, with robes discarded over the back of a chair and several ashtrays full to overflowing. If this was where the current vicar went to gain his spiritual bearings before talking to his flock, it had a bitter aura to it that suggested the man was gaining strength for himself against an impossible task. Considering the sort of company the Billingsworths kept, coupled with the fact Dear Madame had near killed him with flowers and bees, Grace had a sudden empathy for the man.

Beyond the enclave was a small corridor where the vicar's office and then his living quarters were placed, both of them far neater and less full of resigned, existential desperation than the small closet off to the right of the altar. Grace paused to give the rooms a good inspection, the money woes of the church laid out in plain view in the vicar's office. Utility bills stating 'Past due' littered the surface of the vicar's desk. There was a typed out, signed request for a transfer to a more challenging, dangerous Los Angeles mission from his current post. The vicar, from his diction, was a brusque, headstrong sort of fellow with a strong sense of social justice so it was no wonder he felt his presence here was too at odds with the local gentry.

Did he know about Arthur Billingsworth III's unpleasant little hobby? Highly unlikely, Grace reasoned. If anything, he was probably annoyed by the man using his church as a closet space and was aiming to charge him for the privilege if these outstanding bills were any indication. A handwritten request was visible on a post-it note confirmed Grace's suspicions. "Mr. Billingsworth, for the use of the church's services and space please see the attached bill for 300.00 pounds. Though the church is on your estate property it is historically a separate body from it, and thus any space used within it is subject to billing from the Archdiocese."

Powell peered over her shoulder. "I think the vicar is more to blame here. He has ample use of the cellar and if what you expect is down there he knows all about it."

"He's a smart young man with no real ties to this place and a healthy annoyance with the Billingsworths. I doubt very much he would tolerate an impromptu crypt. What he's truly guilty of is arrogance, and as a result, neglect. He could care less about his post here, and that has fostered this situation more than actual involvement ever would."

Powell was nervous. "And what situation would that be?"

Grace was taken aback. Powell had never exuded anything but arrogant confidence in the past, but now that he was forced into action he was strangely recalcitrant, his neck sweaty and his eyes darting into far dark corners as though expecting to find a bogeyman. In truth, they were, and surely Powell understood this. Grace frowned, watching him.

"You barely ever go out in the field, do you?" she asked. "You do all your work from the comfort of your desk, that's the perk of white collar crimes. You don't have to get your hands dirty."

Powell's ego rose to fore. "They want me to star in a talk show on BBC-One."

"To talk about what? How you sit behind a desk and go over accounts and that's how you find your criminals? That you piss your pants when having to go out in the open? For God's sake, Powell, pull your shit together, I need you ready to back me up and goddamn you if you can't do that, we clear?"

His pale, pasty rat face nodded, though Grace still had little confidence in him. She left the vicar's office, Powell close behind her, her ear cocked to every small sound that echoed within the corridor.

"It's true, I don't do much else other than follow around search teams and talk to lawyers and accountants. I've never gone on a proper raid before, a bit too much adrenaline for my liking. I got a ticker that has a murmur, keeps me out of the line of fire."

"Be quiet," Grace hissed. "Do you hear that?"

It was low, so low that it took all of Grace's concentration to hear it, but once she identified it as a human moan Grace suddenly realized that they didn't have much time. "That door at the end of the corridor, it has to lead into the cellar, there isn't any other entrance."

"It's rather small," Powell observed.

"It's mediaeval. But the padlocks on it are new." Grace fingered the open lock, the shining steel giving way beneath her trembling touch. Grace placed a finger to her lips and faced Powell, signalling him to stay quiet. The moans were more obvious now, and definitely male.

"Brace yourself," Grace warned Powell as she opened the small door and began the steep descent.

The first thing that hit her was the strange smell, a mixture of dust, mildew and formaldehyde. Not antiseptic like the morgue where Manny plied her trade, but more of an organic aura of preserved rot. An imperfect alchemy for the dead. Cobwebs clung to the roof of the cellar, and the flicker of candlelight invaded the darkness, illuminating a neglected wooden desk with an unfinished Bible opened in front of it. Some ancient monk's work brought to a sudden halt and left in stasis.

There were figures in the gloom, Grace realized, but they were as immobilized and forgotten as that ornate tome, the long limbs held at awkward angles and strands of hair magnified against the far wall. A low moan met Grace at her left, and she sucked in a breath at the image of the vicar, tied to a plastic chair, his head and face covered in blood. An unfocused eye fixed on her and lolled back in his head before his chin fell and hit his chest.

Panicked, Grace pulled out her cell phone and used its flashlight to illuminate the cellar. Behind her, Powell took a misstep and near tumbled down the stairs, his reedy body pushing her down until they were both standing unsteadily on the dirt floor.

What does one say when faced with a view you can't quite put into words? They looked like mannequins, but even at a glance one knew this wrong, they sat strangely, for one, and there was a papery sallow appearance to the skin that suggested a far more natural source. How many were there? A dozen at least, all families, each one carefully posed around familiar domestic scenes of happy, boring bliss. It took Grace a few moments to realize the furnishings they were propped with in their respective dioramas were cheap do-it-yourself kits from Ikea.

A dozen bodies, three dioramas in all, each containing a mother figure, a father figure, one boy, one girl, the latter two of varying ages. A precious scene of the children being tucked into bunk beds by their parents. Another one of a formal family dinner complete with rotting food, the oranges and apples on display long desiccated into grey husks, the black, watery contents of their plates swimming with chunks of greenish blue mould. The third one was of a study, with an empty winged chair before an electric fireplace and two children playing Scrabble on the floor in front of it.

Powell made a choked sound of disgust and Grace reached back to smack him. "Hold it together," she whispered.

"Are those all bodies?" His eyes were black and wide in the near dark, Grace's cell phone providing a terrifying spotlight.

"Bought and paid for." Grace swung her cell phone in a large sweep, resting it over the last diorama until she found the shadowy outline of a female figure collapsed in a wooden chair and draped over a writing desk. She faced a fake window made of white construction paper and framed with Malm curtains in a dotted grey snowflake print.

Grace could hardly find her voice and she felt it crack. "Mycroft?" She inched closer, her hand shaking as she touched the slumped figure's back. "Mycroft?"

Her fingertips came back wet with blood. She rushed to get a better look and found the nasty gash on Mycroft's forehead. There was a soft plaster over it, and Mycroft's cheek was smeared red.

Powell stood in front of Grace. "I already called it in, paramedics and more back up are on the way. I don't see Billingsworth anywhere, I'm going to check on the vicar."

Grace numbly nodded, Mycroft's unconscious form taking all of her concentration. "For God's sake, why didn't you call me, you daft bitch!" She gingerly swept her arms around Mycroft's limp shoulders, fearful lest she cause more injury. Her pulse was weak but she was very much alive, unlike everyone else in these disturbing scenes.

"You know, I just wanted things to be simpler, like they were in my day."

Grace's blood ran cold as she slowly turned. Arthur Billingsworth III stood behind her in resigned disappointment. "You see, things are just happening too quickly for a man like me. I'm a bit of a plodder, it's true. I like things to be orderly, neat, even a bit predictable. But nothing in my life has been that way, even though I did all I could to cultivate it. I have a daughter who won't speak to me and who runs with criminals. Haven't got a clue who the father of her child is. My wife, she's obsessed with dinner parties that she hates attending. And all these 'friends', well, they're just there for the photo ops, I should think. Appearances. Interview revenue and free fashions." Grace watched him carefully as he plodded past the two posed children and took his place in the winged chair by the electric fire. "Nobody believes in this sort of thing anymore. The tradition of a quiet, country life and the perks of a life of leisure. We all have to work hard at things now, to acquire other things we don't want, all in the name of progress. I just missed it, is all. The quiet, pleasant, simple country life."

Powell stepped back into the scene, his rat face etched in worry as he reached in his back pocket for a set of handcuffs, proving he was a copper after all. She hadn't left home without hers, or her badge, either. They both pinched her ass from her back trouser pocket.

She could hear the shouting of paramedics as they began their descent down the cellar stairs, the vicar taking their first priority before they rushed in to check Mycroft's vitals. Their medical jargon hit Grace like a muffled scream, words like 'concussion' and 'skull fracture' and 'pressure' floating around and through her like the pale grey spiders that crawled across the cobwebs.

Powell stood in front of Billingsworth, a pair of handcuffs dangling in his grip. "I hate people who go on about the good ol' days. They never bloody existed. People dropped dead of undiagnosed cancers, they didn't have enough to eat, all that abuse and neglect that was always there but you just didn't hear about it. Things are better and people have shit memories and that's all it is. This has nothing to do with you wanting to relive your happy ideals, this is about your life not fitting your expectation of it, and who bloody well gives a toss and boo fucking hoo, welcome to the real world, chap, we're all a bunch of losers in the end."

The speech was a tad mangled in Grace's estimation, but the sentiment was correct enough. Billingsworth was hauled to his feet and formally charged with the more obvious offences, while others would be expanded upon at the station. Indecency to a human body. Forcible confinement. Assault and battery. Smuggling of illegal goods. Being a truly fucked up weirdo.

She watched in a daze as Powell took over for the limelight, Billingsworth hauled out of his seat and the cuffs laid on him with Powell dragging him up the cellar steps and into the light, where the flash of cameras hit them hard and reflected in shockwaves into the darkness of the cellar. Mycroft was gingerly taken out of the seat she had been placed in and was now on a stretcher, her face an ashen hue that clashed terribly with her dress, a fashion faux pas she could not forgive herself for. Grace gingerly touched her forehead before the paramedics crowded around Mycroft and shoved Grace out of the way, the chaos of survival a loud battle that slid across the walls of the cellar and settled somewhere near where the forgotten Bible and its dutiful monk had once been disturbed. Neither would ever find completion be it in death or scribe.

"We should see if we can find a record of him, the church would know who he is," she said to the dusty, empty chair and the dried up inkwells. But there was no answer save the heavy sound of her own breathing. The chaos was gone, and all that was left for Grace in this dark, claustrophobic space were the silent routines of the dead.

She knew she had to move, she had to get a forensics team down here to go over the bodies and the scene, to collect evidence, to make sure the nature of the crimes stuck. She had to get to the hospital to monitor how Mycroft was doing. She had to get a statement from her, and from the vicar. She had so much paperwork to do and she had to call Officer LiPing Xao and let her know that it was all over, that the dead were now at rest and no longer doing the work of the tired living.

She stood in the centre of the cellar, unable to move, the shadowed outlines of domestic bliss dipped in formaldehyde and rendered into fragile plastic flickering in an eerie animated glee on the walls surrounding her. She stepped up to the monk's long abandoned post and with one solid breath she blew out the candle perched in the inkwell, sending all tired souls into a blissful, permanent darkness.

 


	10. flowers and formations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we are done! Thank you, whoever has been reading and leaving kudos, especially you Megsnoutopia who read this story with patience from start to finish and wasn't afraid to offer encouragement! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

BLUE DIAMOND  
chapter ten

Say what one will about the NHS, one couldn't dispute the decadent pleasure of heated flannel blankets. Though her head felt as though it was slowly being pried in two with a rusted crowbar, the splitting starting at the back and ending in the centre of her forehead, Mycroft was otherwise unscathed and the soothing warmth of the brown and white blanket cocooned her in a steaming bath of soft fabric. Her room, private and paid for in cash courtesy of John's efficiency, was full to bursting with an array of colourful flowers, and though the riot of beauty would have otherwise made her heart sing, the combination of strong scents were only making her terrible headache worse. Grace, as usual, had shown up with a ragged bouquet clutched in her grip, the sad daisies within it wilting, the leaves the spindly stalks bent and bruised.

"Get a vase for those," Mycroft murmured. She placed her hand across her eyes, shutting out the bright morning sunlight and Grace's propensity to open windows and curtains when they should have stayed shut. "Daisies are my favourite. It would be a shame to see their brief life cut so short because of your silly, sweaty palms."

Grace was too choked with emotion to speak properly, and Mycroft allowed her the soft moment, her hand clasped in Grace's as the flowers were whisked away by John who miraculously found a suitable vase within minutes. "I'm not sure what happened after we went into the cellar, so you're not going to get a whole hell of a lot of notes from me, I'm afraid. But you can jot down that Arthur Billingsworth III and his entire family are a pile of creeps whom I will never visit in either a work or social capacity again. Pour me a glass of water, won't you, Grace? Dear me, look at the way your hand trembles, you're going to spill it all over the place. Just relax. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine."

But emotion was wearing Grace down and though she was a true bloodhound of a copper there was no mistaking that this particular case had hit too close to home. Mycroft didn't dare ask how the vicar was doing. The last thing she remembered was falling down the stairs and the vicar lying in a large, circular puddle, unconscious. The sight of his life's blood seeping onto the dirt floor in black mud was still making Mycroft feel queasy.

"The vicar is fine," Grace assured her, not needing the question asked and for this Mycroft was grateful. "He's in the same boat as you, pretty bad concussion and a broken collarbone, but he'll fully recover, as will you. You're damned lucky, you silly cow. You should have called me! You never should have gone in that cellar alone!"

Mycroft let out a huff of frustration. "Right, because it was so painfully obvious that Arthur was into corpse twaddle. Don't look at me like that, I feel sick enough without you dry-heaving at my side." Grace held out a glass of water for her, and Mycroft refused to take it, gesturing instead that she leave it on the side table beside her bed. "It needs ice. Why don't you go and have a little walk to clear your head a bit, you're not yourself at all, you're usually reprimanding me non-stop at this point. No, my darling woman, retirement is not yet on the table. I need a good cup of tea more than tepid, stale water. Two sugars, organic if they have it, and a slice of lemon."

Grace sniffed at this, and wiped an unshed tear from her eye. "Can't gather why you like your tea like that. Putting lemon it makes it taste like Windex."

"Just get me a cup of tea."

"Cures all ills don't it?" Grace roughly sniffed again, and then leaned over to give Mycroft a gentle kiss that left her body longing and her head reeling in thumping pain. "Back in a few. I'll get one for you, too, John."

John gave a nod of acknowledgement and Grace slipped out of the room, leaving John and Mycroft alone together. She propped herself up on her pillows with effort, the headache and residual aches from the fall down the cellar stairs poking her in odd places. She felt bruised all over, like a mishandled fruit, soft and swollen with ugly dark marks flush across her arms, legs and abdomen. John's furrowed professional concern followed every move she made. "I'm not broken china, so don't fret. I can think of many places far more conducive to rest and relaxation than a hospital bed, true, and with all these flowers the ambiance here is a tad funereal for my liking. Believe me, John, I'd much rather be at home making you and Sherlock your daily breakfast. Have you been eating properly since I've been out?"

John didn't answer her. He picked up her chart, the deep wrinkles in his brow furrowing deeper as he went over it, and he didn't bother to hide his agitation with what he found there. With chart still in hand, he went over her vitals and checked the machines monitoring her pulse, along with the drip that was steadily giving her some much needed pain killers to keep her aches at bay. He took her arm and gently bent it at the elbow, watching her wincing expression as he manipulated the joint and she fought the urge to pull her arm away. It felt like needles were poking through her skin from the inside and leaving her funny bone aching. He released his grip and let her battered arm fall softly onto her stomach.

St. Mary's wasn't a terrible hospital, though many of the nurses and doctors were familiar with Grace and her usual basement meetings with their coroner. Manny was currently working in the morgue and had offered up promises that she would be up for a visit. John was poor company at present, he was restless as he inspected the annoying equipment she was hooked up to with a routine ease, his baby finger tapping along the side of her chart in thoughtful reflection as he went over the numbers. 'He must be having memories of his glory days,' Mycroft thought, and she felt a pang of empathy for John. She'd had a light tap on her cranium in comparison to what had happened to him. She'd recover fully, she didn't have bits of shrapnel floating around in her grey chunks, there was nothing cutting off the ebb and flow of information and if there were gaps that was the responsibility of her subconscious, and who knew where that was hiding.

A harried, rushed young nurse entered her room, her pink face a mask of professional courtesy, though Mycroft understood her bruised face coupled with how she had ended up here was all the nurses at their station could talk about. No one needed The Daily Mail when one had Nurse O'Connor on the grapevine. Nurse O'Connor smoothed down her pink elephant scrubs before taking the chart from John, who forced her to take a look at something on the chart, a silent understanding being exchanged between them.

"I agree, that would be a problem," a paled Nurse O'Connor said to him. She inspected Mycroft's arm and gave her a pinched smile, which did nothing to alleviate Mycroft's growing concern that something was seriously wrong. John rolled back and forth on his heels, his hands clasped behind his back in professional observation. "I'll be sure to let Dr. Fraiser know."

It was an odd exchange, and John, in his little brown corduroys and his worn grey jumper, did not seem, in this moment, quite so simple. He gave her a warm smile and pressed her hand in his in a reassuring squeeze, his adoration sweet and obvious and suddenly just a tiny bit unsettling.

Mycroft smiled back, and then discreetly withdrew her hand.

Arguing broke up the awkward moment and a flurry of scowls and curse words wound their way into their room. John inched his way out, getting a coffee cup pressed into his hand as he exited her room and turned left down the long corridor that led to the main exit. She earned a tired apology from Grace which she waved off, only for the action to cause a stab of tingling pain to course through her arm, from her elbow down to her wrist and back again in a tortuous ricochet. "Bugger, that hurts! Grace," Mycroft said when John was well out of the room thus out of earshot. "There's something about John that's rather troubling me..."

"I got you coffee instead of tea," Grace replied, not hearing her. The source of her distraction, Inspector Powell, stood silent now, sipping at his own milky brew. He had slid into her room like the snake he was and she hadn't noticed his arrival. Grace was still apologizing about the coffee mistake. At this point Mycroft didn't care if it was black paint, as long as it was hot and steaming. She took the paper cup from Grace and was shocked at how pleased her body was to finally have some caffeine. Her bruised lip didn't like the heat, but the aching bones along her jaw did and she pressed the paper cup against her cheek in sighing relief.

"Much as I appreciate the doting observance of both you and the staff here at St. Mary's, I want to go home. I can't see the point of dwindling in this bed now that I'm fully conscious. I hope you brought an overnight bag with you, Grace."

"I've done nothing of the sort! You need to get better first!"

Powell stood at the foot of her bed, oddly small and apologetic, looking more hamster than rat these days. He'd been gaining weight, Mycroft noticed, right around the middle, an actual ring of fat and flesh. Lunches high in animal proteins and thick, buttery fats coupled with sugar dense carbohydrates meant he was dining out a lot these days, special, costly meals that were the hallmark of upper class consumption. His superiors were fattening him up, and he was lapping the cream as though it was about to be wrenched from him. And well it would be. With that ring expanding around his abdomen, Powell's hunt for a promotion would not be rewarded by this case, if anything the embarrassment and association of it would harm him. He was too enamoured with their compliments to understand that they could easily be used to mask their equal displeasure.

"We were able to arrest Billingsworth for assault, but it's getting pretty difficult to make much more stick." Powell clung to the footboard of Mycroft's bed, his thin fingers like pale sticks bleached in the morning sunlight. "Seems it's a bit embarrassing for those higher up to have associations with a man who practises necrophilia as a hobby." He coughed on this, the nature of what he'd seen and how he was being forced to deal with it at pure odds against his instincts as both a human being and a cop. "I didn't get that talk show that was promised, after all. The BBC has withdrawn from any further contact with the Yard for the next little while, at least, that is, contact with me."

"No new specials on the horizon, then?" Grace asked. She sipped at her coffee and eyed him over its rim.

"No. Nothing at all."

"Guess there needs to be a bit of breathing room for the public to be able to digest it all properly. A good decade or so before the concept of necrotutes and royal lineage can coexist..."

Powell coughed into his fist, looking paler than Mycroft. "I really wish you wouldn't use that term."

"What? Necrotutes? Don't give me side eye about it, it's Manny's moniker."

"Bloody disgusting business." Powell shook his unpleasant memories off with effort. "Look, Mycroft, the trouble is, even with the assault charge it's going to be hard to get this bastard any jail time. He's already claiming diminished capacity due to the stress of his daughter running off with some Enfield gang banger and from the grapevine I keep my ear on, the judges know Billingsworth and his family too well to be objective. He's going to walk on all counts, even the gross indecencies to the human bodies. He's claiming he never had sex with any of them, and it was all just a creepy menagerie project."

Grace cursed out her shock. "Fuck's sake, are you telling me he's calling that sick collection of his 'art'?"

"Post modern destructionist or some made up term like that, I don't bloody know, he might not have stuck anything up any of them but he's a wanker through and through. It's more open secret than not and I guess we now know why the daughter ran off as soon as she was able. The more questions I've asked the more it becomes clear that miserable wife of his knew all about it. But I can't go putting anything in writing and I can't conduct family interviews. I've been choked by upper levels, I'm not allowed to say a word about it to the press under threat of outright insubordination. I could end up being a meter maid if dare to even whisper about Arthur Billingsworth III's midnight playboy funeral grotto."

Mycroft couldn't believe what she was hearing, for surely the blatant nature of the crimes were vile enough for some form of punishment? "He intended to kill both myself and the vicar, he tied both of us up against our will! Surely forcible confinement is still considered a crime!"

Powell and Grace exchanged looks and Mycroft was struck with how similar they suddenly were, both with their London Fog inspired trench coats and no nonsense black shoes, though Powell's were of Italian leather construction and Grace's were more no slip, subtle Doc Martin's. The uniformity of them bothered her, as though Grace was part of an actual breed of person that was distinct, but also influenced by the social construction around her.

Grace had told her the truth all along, she was a cop first, person second. It was in her DNA, in the very cells that made her. Powell was a mongrel of that sort, too, and now with the two of them in the room together, it was painfully obvious to Mycroft that she would always have that conflict of law and order versus her revolutionary chaos throughout her relationship with Grace.

Grace pulled up a chair at Mycroft's bedside, her coffee held with the expert clutch of a java addict. "You should have seen that little goblin in the interview room. I kept passing him mints hoping he'd get the hint, but that mossy mouth of his filled the room with sulphur. His breath made my eyes water. How that Dear Madame of his managed to procreate with him I don't care to know. Not someone you'd want to deep throat without hazard pay first."

Powell choked on his coffee at this, and was still giggling as he wiped droplets of pale beige off of the collar of his waterproof trench coat with a linen handkerchief he'd pulled from his inside pocket. An old fashioned habit he'd picked up from his elders, Mycroft thought, and one among many he'd soon start rebelling against. One couldn't dangle prizes in front of a sycophant and then take them away without expecting an unpleasant repercussion.

"What gets me is how he tries to justify it all." Grace took Mycroft's hand in hers, the various calluses within her grip soothing in their suggestion of strength, and yet gentle enough not to further bruise her. Mycroft returned the gesture with a squeeze of her own, emotion threatening to overcome her though Grace appeared oblivious. How wonderful these tiny gestures were, how so full of significance! Just to know that she was here, that she was concerned enough to be at her side and not leave her, that those who loved her understood the importance of being present in a crisis.

Victoria Holmes was notably absent. No surprise there.

"He kept going on about wanting a softer family, something he could fall back on with more comfortable ease. He's used to all of his relationships being easy and free of conflict, I guess, and he got all bothered by how sharp edged everyone in his family sphere became. It doesn't excuse a thing, he's a spoiled prat who wants the world his way and he still can't see he's done anything wrong. It's like there's some weird blockage in his reasoning that can't see beyond the focus of himself. It's maddening and scary at the same time, because damn it all, if the bastard doesn't have enough money to circumvent the system and keep himself above the law. It makes me sick."

To both their surprise, Powell was in agreement. "They're an inbred collection, that's for sure. Their social circle is so incestuous you don't dare try and breach any branch of it with any form of criticism. Like I said before, I been told to keep my gob shut."

Grace crossed her arms at this, her face a decidedly angry shade of blotchy red that made Mycroft wish she could simply kiss the consternation from her. Once she got in these moods, Grace would be brooding and impossible to talk to, so immersed in a case that Mycroft would have to prompt her to eat properly, and to force her to sleep. Lavender would have to be introduced into her diet. Without Grace's knowing, she would switch out her coffee with a weaker, organic hickory brew in the hopes of allowing her system to achieve some rest.

"He's got connections to the Crown Cartel," Grace muttered. "Even if he did use Anastasia as their go-between, his money is tainted by association. I don't want him released yet, and I don't care about the judge's order, we can put him up on a charge of conspiracy with the Cartel to see if we can shake loose some information."

Powell shook his head. "The man is career kryptonite. Don't do this, Grace, there's no point. He doesn't know a thing."

"He's right, you know." They all turned to see Sherlock peering into the room, his tattered coat fluttered around him like feathers. The perfume of quality Peter Tosh ganja followed him into the room, and Mycroft closed her eyes, willing her brother to disappear. The stench was overpowering and wreaking havoc with her headache. "I was just in visiting that vicar fellow. Nice guy. Sold him some high grade grass that the organic growers are calling Evergreen Fertilizer on account of its consciousness expanding properties. He said it's not near as good as his Heavenly Father Buds. Not so sure about that, I had an excellent high from the Evergreen, but then, everyone is different. I'm not sure about that guaranteed mind expansion business, either, and I personally find that to be an individual's responsibility. If you're a close minded jackass, no amount of proper skunk is going to help you. Hello, Mycroft." He stood away from the bed and refused to get closer. "You're looking as purple as a plum. Mother called to tell you she doesn't need the extra cash this week but if you could spot her a loan of twenty thousand on Friday that would be appreciated."

Mycroft winced at the sum. "Tell her I have no interest in her hobbies and like I've already told her I will not be wasting one red penny on her. Why isn't she here to ask me for it herself?"

Sherlock shifted foot to foot at this.

"She's...Um...She's entertaining the Count and Countess of Spain at present, they're bunking it at Paisley Cottage."

"What? No!"

"Off for a ramble every day, that's the plan, Mother says."

Mycroft's brain, which was not at all bruised, the synapses in painful clarity, quickly calculated the likelihood of that beautiful diamond necklace laying unsecured at Paisley Cottage, ripe for picking for any jackass to wander in and pilfer it. The statistics in favour of this scenario were further insulted by the fact that there was no question Victoria Holmes had already wrapped her manicured fingers tight around it and had sloppily stolen it, She would be caught red handed and Mycroft knew all hopes of securing the blue diamond necklace for herself would be ruined. No visit to the isolated island off the coast of Spain to steal both hospitality and jewels, her financial gains that had already paid for a delightful trip to France were disappearing into the clench of her mother's ignorant fist. No, she won't tolerate it!

"You will inform Mother she is not to do anything stupid," Mycroft further instructed her brother. "A difficult task, but one that she will simply have to enact and tell her it's in her best financial interest to keep her hands off of other people's treasures." Mycroft pressed her fingertips to her aching skull and ignored the worried frown Grace gave her. "I'll wire her the damned money."

Powell watched the whole exchange with a mixture of confusion and pity, the emotionality of it clearly getting under his craw. He shuffled out of the room after a pleasant, but awkward, goodbye, and pulled Grace aside to further engage her in his cause. "Not a word to anyone about Billingsworth, got it? We're really in trouble here, Grace, I didn't want to say more in front of Miss Holmes, but Chief Wilcox got a right browbeating over the whole keeping people locked in the house thing while we were searching for Arthur. In truth, the quicker we let this thing disappear, the better."

Grace didn't agree, but the time to argue with the man wasn't now, and Mycroft was grateful that she instead returned brooding to her seat at Mycroft's bedside, her scowl deeper and more disturbed than ever. Powell gave Sherlock a curt nod as he left, but not without first reminding him that being that open about his Mary Jane drug dealing could have consequences with beat coppers on the make. Sherlock reminded him that more than half of the force at the Yard were his best customers.

"Where's John gone?" Sherlock asked when he returned to the room. "We have plans this afternoon, I have encouraged Janine to accompany us to Camden Passage to hunt down some imported Indian silk scarves. She loves the things, all that glitters like gold and all that."

This was a new development, and Mycroft was instantly confused by it. "Who is Janine?" she asked, quickly taking in the way her brother hunched at the question as though expecting a blow. Her eyes went wide in shocked understanding. "Is this a girlfriend?"

"No, not...Not really, we're friends, that's all. I mean, what do I need a girlfriend for? Who needs that sort of baggage, I see what it does to you and Grace, all wrapped up tight in each other's lives like some kind of perpetual co-dependence machine. No, that's not for me, and besides, I've got John, and if you got that kind of easygoing company having a girlfriend just complicates matters." His phone chimed a disco tune and he fished it out of his coat of many pockets after some effort to find it, his finger swiping across the screen. "She's downstairs now. I'll be back later."

"Are you going home any time soon?" Grace asked.

For a moment Sherlock looked blank. "It's a long walk to Baker Street from here, are you offering John and I a lift later?"

"I don't think your home is that far." Grace fished in her trouser pocket and took out a thick set of keys. She unhooked one and handed it to Sherlock. "I'd say it's pretty close by, actually."

Sherlock gave her an odd look. "Belgravia is just as far..."

"That's Mycroft's home. I'm talking about yours." Grace took a deep intake of breath and wouldn't look at Mycroft who was now slowly piecing together exactly what was happening, her heart hammering in joyful glee. "This is the key to my former flat in Enfield. I know you like people watching and that's a big part of Baker Street's appeal, but that dump is getting razed to the ground soon and you and John need a safe place to live. I live across the street from a bar and above a pizza shop, lots of observation opportunities with a great front picture window view. I wouldn't say it's the best flat in the world, but it's large and clean and solid enough and the landlord is pretty reasonable if you don't give her too much lip. That would be me, by the way, in case you were wondering."

Sherlock took the key from her and looked at it as though it were a miraculous jewel that was set to disappear if he didn't keep staring at it. "You're just going to give me your flat?"

Grace glanced at Mycroft, who had her hand at her heart, knowing the significance of this admission. "Yeah. I kind of got a soft spot for this place in Belgravia, even if it does have a creepy panther portrait over the bed."

"I'll take it down!" Mycroft exclaimed and extended her arms wide for Grace to fall into her tearful, emotional embrace, the waves of relief and comfort washing over her heart in crashing need. She clutched at Grace's strong shoulders with her bony fingers, knowing they had to be bruising her, but she couldn't let go. They were going to officially live together, no safety net in place, no escape route for either of them. The next step was obvious and damn if she wouldn't find the biggest diamond in the world, heavy enough to break Grace's arm every time she tried to lift her hand!

She was happily wiping tears from her eyes when the surgeon on call came into the room, his body language tense as he read over her chart. Dr. Fraiser was a lithe young man with dark hair and a soft Indian accent that was peppered with Scottish inflections. If anyone heard him over the phone they would assume he was Welsh. He had a brusque manner and never wasted time with small talk or cheery upbeat speech that was supposed to put his patient at ease. He walked to her bedside and without a word he began lifting her arm, the one John had manipulated, the pads of his fingers digging painfully into her elbow joint hard enough to make her yelp.

"That's a tad tenderized, as the bruises attest," Mycroft complained. She pulled her arm away, the residual ache coursing up and down its entire length.

Dr. Fraiser had no care for her pain. "Your doctor friend noted, quite rightly, that it's possible you have a deep vein thrombosis in your elbow, which was heavily bruised on your way down the stairs. I'm putting you on blood thinners to prevent any possible blood clots and if you experience any shortness of breath or other signs of cardiac distress you are to come to the hospital immediately. I'm confident the Plavex will do the job, but I must say, I'm rather embarrassed that this wasn't caught until now. Your friend is quite observant, where is he currently practising?"

Mycroft blinked, sure that was she was hearing was fiction, for it couldn't be John this man was talking about, that silent partner of her brother who was missing most of his marbles. Well, the ones that didn't count, she supposed, for here was a surgeon standing right there in front of her going on about a job well done. "He's...He's retired," Mycroft tactfully replied and this seemed a good enough explanation for Dr. Fraiser.

"Give him yours and my thanks, then. Everything else seems to be progressing as normal, so I'm confident you can go home by later on this evening. The nurse will be by later with your discharge papers and I'll make sure your prescriptions will be ready at the nurse's desk upon leaving. You can go to your GP for a check up in a week, though I can't foresee any other complications...Unless, of course, your highly observant friend manages to catch one out. Retired, you said? I guess it's true what they say, one never does stop being a doctor no more than anyone stops breathing." He glanced around the room before putting her chart back on its hook at the end of her bed. "You've got a lot of admirers, Miss Holmes. That pile of dark roses at the window is quite the riot. Last time I saw an arrangement like that was when Princess Anne came in to get a treatment for a tick bite. You must be quite the socialite."

With that blunt observation in place, Dr. Fraiser returned to his rounds, leaving Mycroft and Grace staring at the bouquet in question. She was usually highly capable of putting a price tag on all items within her scope of vision, so Mycroft took the oversight to mean the concussion was perhaps worse than she'd originally thought, and it had rattled her brain around enough to momentarily damage her monetary obsession. It was returning full force now, especially with the assessment of the arrangement, the rarity of the dark roses, which were nearly black and of a historically vintage variety, the white ceramic vase large and iridescent, an import from a Dutch designer whose ashtrays didn't go for less than five hundred pounds each. The flowers themselves, at least two dozen in all, were a costly venture, upwards of a thousand pounds worth of petals and greenery. As she took in the quick calculations Mycroft realized that this was the most expensive bouquet of the lot and was worth upwards of three thousand pounds.

"Who is it from?" Grace asked.

Instinct kicked in and Mycroft fought the urge to tell Grace not to pick up the small beige card with its typewritten message, the blue ink in the far left corner visible even from her bed which was clear across the room. "This is from the Crown Cartel," Grace stated, and Mycroft shivered, the warmed blankets doing nothing to stave off the chill that overtook her and settled deep inside of her marrow.

Frowning, Grace lifted the plain card and opened it, and Mycroft wanted to beg her not to read it, to simply toss the expensive bouquet out the window and to rid themselves of the threat implicit in its giving. But Grace was not so self preserving, and she read the message over to herself several times before uttering it aloud so Mycroft could hear it, too.

"As you may already know, we prefer our dead to stay dead. Anastasia and Boris had some grey ideas in that regard, but we were finally able to bring them around to our way of thinking. Some business ventures aren't meant to succeed. Though they assured me this was a victimless crime, I found the entirety of it too distasteful to continue.

Vigilantism is hardly our style, but it can be incorporated when we see the legal gaps. I hope you don't mind our cleaning house for you, Inspector Grace Lestrade. As for you, Miss Holmes, I wish you a full recovery. And don't worry. Arthur Billingsworth III won't be breathing on anyone with that terrible breath of his any time soon.

Yours,  
xx  
'The Ghost', C.C."

Terror crept into Mycroft's bones and she shivered uncontrollably, her hand at her mouth, pale pink nails caging her pale, pink lips. "They're coming for us!"

Grace, however, had a very different reaction and Mycroft was infuriated by her calm. Grace inspected the card, turning it upside down and looking on the back and then carefully inspecting the small note in the left hand corner in blue ink: 'GHOST-08/NIX'.

"They're going after Arthur Billingsworth III and I suspect we may have waited too long already. I need to call Powell...It's imperative we keep Arthur in this country, if he hops on a plane for holiday now we won't have any jurisdiction over his death!"

Mycroft sank back on her pillows at this, her bed a tad chilled. "Powell. Billingsworth. These are your concerns? For God's sake, Grace, I was the one sent flowers, this is a personal vendetta!"

"We have nothing at all to worry about, if anything the Cartel thinks it has done us a favour by getting rid of their own chaff. There is no threat here, Mycroft, only explanation." She shook her head and lightly chuckled at the card in her hand and Mycroft was sure the woman had finally cracked, the stress of the last week now leaving her in a psychotic break. She'd call Nurse O'Connor and have escorted to the psych ward upstairs, she'd insist they give her a strong sedative and heavy duty psychological therapy. The gossip at the desk would be tittering into next year, so embedded even Manny would hear about it.

"It's a filing system, and I finally know what GHOST-08 stands for. The Crown Cartel is labelling and cataloguing its various criminal activities, and this current one was the plan to assassinate Boris and Anastasia for their corpse project which the Crown Cartel did not approve of. They were given a loan for heroin peddling, not raising the dead and sending them out into the streets to turn tricks "

Mycroft could care less. "Who cares how they keep their books? Being on their radar is bad news and now the Ghost him or herself is sending me flowers while I'm on my deathbed! We need protection, Grace!"

Grace sighed at her dramatics. "First, you're not on your deathbed, you had bumps and scrapes that are currently being treated and you're going home tomorrow. Second, we don't need protection because this little note is just to inform me, not attack me, or you. I'm rather grateful for it, actually, it opens up some huge evidence in regards to cracking the Cartel and I daresay this little note could be the big break in the case." Grace grinned at it before taking out an evidence bag from her inside trench coat pocket (seriously, did the woman ever go out without a plastic baggie handy in case she found some speck of dust to put a criminal in chains?) and slid the small card into it. "The way I figure it, these notations on the bottom of their correspondence is part of a larger system of cataloguing. A tad OCD, but the Crown Cartel is keeping track of their various criminal enterprises and all things in relation to each one with these index codes. GHOST-08/NIX means this is both a personal project belonging to the Crown Cartel leader, ie: The Ghost, and the 08/NIX is a signifier that this particular criminal enterprise has reached its end. GHOST-08 is no longer open for business, the plan has run its course."

"This doesn't offer me any assurance whatsoever." Mycroft began fussing with the needles still embedded in the back of her hand and pressed the button frantically to call in the nurse. "I'm leaving this hospital now, I am not sitting in here like some unmoving target the Ghost can wander in and eliminate. You said it yourself, he has a system in place, and the fact I'm getting these notes means I'm a part of it, and you are too! GHOST-08--Elimination of all! I won't sit here and wait to be taken out!"

"I don't think that's how it works." Grace shook her head at Nurse O'Connor, who as she entered the room took in Mycroft's agitated state and Grace's firm bid for her to leave as signs that this was personal rather than medical business. She turned on her heel and left, Mycroft pleading at her to come back.

"For God's sake, you're being a ridiculous drama queen!"

"Our murder is imminent!"

"Hardly! I'd say those roses were given to you for a job well done!"

Mycroft softened in Grace's grip at this, genuine confusion mixed with possibility making her expressions near comical. "What the devil do you mean?" She didn't wait for Grace to answer, for Mycroft Holmes as has been mentioned before is quite an intelligent woman, so intelligent, in fact, that should she have wanted to it would have been easy for her to step into the realm of subterfuge and politics and bend it to the will of her clipped high heels down secretive, hallowed government maintained halls. But Mycroft is too smart for such involvement, and knows that true freedom lies on the periphery, where one is mostly invisible and thus considered harmless.

"The Crown Cartel was looking for the buyer." She felt the blood drain from her face, and a feeling of nausea overwhelmed her. "Oh dear God, they're going to kill Arthur Billingsworth III."

"Probably," Grace said, shrugging. "But that's not my department until it actually happens, and happens on UK soil. That bloody bastard has to stay alive for my final interview with him." She checked her watch. "I got an hour, I'd best get back to the Yard before he's cut loose. All things considered, I'm looking very forward to that comeuppance since my own hands are very tightly tied in that regard. What do you think? Should I get a jump on Powell and contact the BBC and give them a hell of a story they can't refuse when the inevitable murder happens? I think a French actress would serve you better in a fictional setting, maybe get a younger version of Carole Bouquet to play you. She was fabulous in 'La Mante'."

***

On an unassuming quiet side street in London, tucked away from the regular busy rabble that infects the busy circular spin of Piccadilly and well after the quiet, but overly priced million dollar row homes of Belgravia, one would find a tiny art gallery that is near devoid of all art. There are some scant pieces, a broach that once belonged to a Countess in seventeenth century Russia, and a mediaeval tapestry depicting a rather anorexic and disproportionate unicorn fashioned by an unknown schizophrenic Italian weaver circa 1034 A.D., but other than these and a few other items, the gallery is mostly empty. Dark grey walls enclose it into an unappealing, shadowed blankness that looks as uninviting as any tomb. On a tiny silver plaque on the outside glass door is the simple inscription: Holmes Galleria. H. Presad, Curator, and this is the only hint to any outsider of what this place actually represents.

Mr. Harlan Presad is the careful note taker and broker between Mycroft Holmes's acquisitions and the outside world, though the kind of money changing hands precludes it from a good 99% of the population. That they are trading in stolen goods is an open secret between buyer, seller and broker and it is through Mr. Presad that these meetings and exchanges occur.

Mycroft Holmes pays Mr. Presad very well for the discretion of his service, which has proved to be stellar. He was once an actual museum curator in a life not so different from this one, though he never specified as to actually where (there are rumours it was an Argentinean private gallery, where art pilfered by Nazis in WWII were on display, and he is rumoured to have dined with then Presidente Juan Peron, though this cannot be confirmed) and was also employed by the Zurich Vault in Switzerland and still maintains a friendly business relationship with that supremely high security storage facility. Now in his seventies, this work is both relaxing and challenging enough to stave off boredom and with his pleasant condominium in the trendy part of Soho bought and paid for he is set for the rest of his natural life. Vacations in South America twice a year and routine trips to Panama were a couple of the many perks he enjoyed working for Mycroft Holmes. Retirement was never so inviting.

But even so, such loyalty that is purchased rather than earned can create cracks in even those most stoic of men like Mr. Presad, and he can't entirely be blamed for taking on some side business that did not, it must be said, have any association with the lovely Miss Holmes, nor did she share in any of those sideline accounts which were strictly held in confidence for himself alone.

The unexpected resale of the blue diamond ring had been highly profitable and was now adorning the chubby pinkie of a Saudi prince who brought it out for special foreign dignitaries who fawned over the prince's oil reserves. The extra cash was a bonus for Miss Holmes and it also created a buffer against guilt for Mr. Presad, for he did adore the woman and was very appreciative her lucrative business sense. Built like a thin, hollow reed, his bald head shining beneath the small pot lights that gave off very little illumination in the grey gloom of the sparse gallery, Mr. Presad was both cool and formally congenial. He had a visitor and not one he was keen to have a long conversation with.

"I did as requested, and there is no way the roses can be traced back to you. I used a proxy intermediary to order them online and had a young man who is a vague acquaintance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes to pay for them in full, in cash. Though this may create a bit of a brow raise when investigated, I assure you that without a paper trail they cannot discover the true purchaser."

The cold silence that met him filled in the angry gaps of conversation and Mr. Presad felt the nervous need to explain himself further. "I am not in the habit of being easy to detect, I did assure you of this and I do not appreciate my abilities being questioned. Rumours may abound, but nothing can stick. If I somehow made it possible for Goebbels to purchase a fifteen foot yacht which he enjoyed until the end of his days, who is to say? It won't be myself, I can't claim to know these details. You do understand."

He smiled at the change in atmosphere between them, the anger giving way to curiosity. Mr. Presad is an expert in what he does because he knows the human heart very well, and he knows that it is a greedy, needy thing that will gobble up all hope in its path in its pursuit for its own happiness. Hearts are selfish things, at their core. Even the well being of another is often at the cost of a heart, one broken or one mended and always at odds with itself.

"I catalogued everything as per your proffered method, though I do wish you would use a less obvious system. A series of numbers is my preference, with every primary number indicating the type of jewel, the initial cost in millions and dates of purchase. Even numbers indicate points of resale, months of storage and regular purchasers, a detailed system that informs me far more than is necessary at times, but more is better, I always say." He looked down his nose at his side client who was not amused by his supercilious judgement. "In any case, there has been no breach of contract here. Your anonymity, as always, is assured."

A leathered paper envelope was slid across the counter to Mr. Presad, who found such exchanges gauche even if they were necessary. He knew better than to count the cash within it, for the trust between the two men was implicit and to do so would be considered exceptionally rude. He placed his hand over the envelope and discreetly slid it out of sight beneath the counter and blatantly ignored it now that it was in its hiding place in a locked metal drawer he kept for this exact purpose. He wondered if a trip to Argentina for Christmas could be arranged, the enjoyment of an inherited fifteen foot yacht and the company of a lithe young man from the local village who had a swath of freckles across his heavily muscled back wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. Rodrigo's emails were always moaning about how he didn't visit often enough. It would be a pleasant Christmas gift for them both.

"I must say, however, that I do appreciate the simplicity of our arrangement." Mr. Presad allowed his gaze to drift towards the softly felted beige envelope with its well worn use a testament to how often they exchanged it back and forth. The same envelope was used, over and over, a form of currency in and of itself. The next job request would have Mr. Presad silently handing the empty envelope over and then eagerly awaiting its full return when the task was completed.

In the bottom left hand corner was the usual curious insignia that Mr. Presad had found so troubling. 'GHOST-MH3'.

It wasn't his habit to ask questions, and certainly he had spent his entire life making himself an expert in that avoidance, projecting upon his clientele the sensation that all he had witnessed in life, no matter how depraved, had ultimately resulted in little more to him than tired boredom. And while this was a persona that worked well in fooling those men of narcissistic, evil desires and their ensuing material wealth, he found it rather disingenuous to use on this man, who while flawed was not in the same physical nor mental twisted calibration as those navel gazing villains against humanity he had worked with in the past.

"I do hope you forgive this question, for I don't ask such things lightly, and am known instead for my utter lack of curiosity and blatant apathy. So, you understand, my need to know has an unexpected complexity to it. I have worked with the most vile and abominable men imaginable and managed their affairs with a smile and a complete lack of judgement. At least, superficially, and that was enough for them. If I abhorred them, that was my own business and kept intensely private. But I must say, sir, to you, I do not feel such animosity and instead I wish to be open in my admiration for much of what you do. You paint yourself in the most garish ugly colours possible and yet it is this that is the ruse, this that is the cover for your more humanitarian crimes. I have to ask you--Why are you so locked on Miss Holmes and to her brother so firmly? The former I can possibly see, but she is not of any benefit to you romantically if you have some mild delusion in that regard, for she is wholly smitten with her Detective Inspector and I daresay you don't stand a chance for she has those bits of self that you just...Well...Don't have. She is of the Patricia Highsmith set, haughty and dramatic and all about female company, as well you know. The latter, her brother, never have I met such a wastrel, his mind, though brilliant, is lazy and unformed, lost beneath a clouded glaze of Jamaican A Strain that has left him unmotivated and, sadly, pointless. But he does care deeply for his sister and perhaps it is a full time job being a human buffer against the flighty misery that is their mother, Victoria Holmes. But how is it that you fit in to this picture? You dared to risk your own exposure by sending that large display of flowers to her hospital room, so care is clearly there. But why? And to what end?"

As expected, the curator, Mr. Presad, only received a protracted, blank silence as his answer. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, giving up before the uncomfortable, one-sided conversation became adversarial. "In the end, a man's secrets are all he has left to give comfort to his heart." Mr. Presad gave his client a warm smile, eager to change the subject. "Such a beautiful specimen. Have you had her long?"

The borzoi nuzzled his open palm like an obedient deer and he playfully slid his fingers along her soft, long snout. He toyed with her collar, resting on the small silver medallion that proudly proclaimed her name. "Catherine the Great. A fitting royal title for such a royal girl. I had never thought I'd see another one in my lifetime, the last borzoi I had ever met was on the Russian border with the Ukraine and an arms dealer bred them as a hobby. Watching them glide across the open expanse of rough countryside was one of the most astonishing examples of physiology and physics I had ever experienced. Such gentle souls they are, you can even see it as they run, there is a kindness within them that can't be extinguished. It is part of their regal bearing. An unspoken empathy one doesn't find in people very often. She certainly likes you, look at how she leans against your leg, seeking your support."

Their business finished, John Watson left the curator and Mycroft Holmes's shell business behind, the borzoi trotting happily beside him in bouncing tandem. It was a long walk back to Belgravia where Sherlock was waiting for him, a good hour at least at a fast pace, but the evening was still young. Though she was still in hospital, Mycroft had promised all of them their usual breakfast come the morning.

He quickened his steps, the borzoi following in a horse-like trot. He was looking forward to it.

END

 

 


End file.
